Studio: international art (14.1898)

Expressive Line

less the Editor seeks to cheer or to congratulate me
by the offering of a couple of Forains.” Alas !
they were reproductions. In the brown envelope
there was a neat note. Might not the reproduc-
tions—in substance, this is what it said to me—
might not the reproductions from two drawings of
Forain’s suggest a text which, as the Editor knew,
to no one more than to myself could it be con-
genial to preach upon ? The text—reticence of work-
manship, economy, and expressiveness of “ line.”
There was a certain tendency, nowadays, amongst
our younger artists, especially amongst illustrators,
to avoid the frank employment of “ line,” and to
make many strokes in themselves most of them
meaningless as well as crowded: done to secure
“ tone.” Could not a little sermon be preached
on the saving grace of a return to “ line ” ? And,
to fortify the matter, if Forain was not enough, the
Editor could choose some Japanese drawings, draw-
ings in line, which, by-the-bye, like Forain’s, should
be brush drawings. So perhaps a little healthy
lesson might be taught to excellent young men.

I accepted the Editor’s proposition, but added to
it a rider of my own. He was quite right, I told
him : no one enjoyed more thoroughly than I did
the accomplishment, in any art, of a great thing by
little means : terse, pregnant literature; decisive,
economic draughtsmanship. And in regard to the
draughtsmanship, those Forains illustrated the
matter well, and so, no doubt, would the Japanese

drawings, which he would be so good as to select,
for no one knew them better. But, if I preach, I
said, my illustrations should be drawn from sources
wider, and some of them, at all events, in time
more remote. “ Your excellent young men know
something of Forain, as they know Phil May.
The Japanese they will receive gladly. I should
like, if you please, the illustrations to take them
into other worlds as well. For, when you insist
upon the expressiveness of 1 line,’ and the econo-
mical use of it, you insist practically upon the value
of a quality not recognised only by the modern
Frenchman and the Japanese, but the property
rather of nearly all great artists, from the days when,
in whatever land, pictorial art first became mature.”
The Editor assented, and I convinced myself
very speedily that my sermon would be best
preached by the illustrations themselves, did I but
choose discreetly, and that my words need be but
few. Phil May was talked about. Excellent; but
already very familiar, and, as far as method is con-
cerned, in some measure a result of the French-
men. Let us, I thought, go farther. But, not to
go too far at first, let there be a Charles Keene.
And we thought of one—a portrait of Millais.* If
Charles Keene’s work has any quality at all, it has the
quality of expressive line. How it differs from that
of his contemporaries in the publication to which he

* This portrait was published as a supplement to the
February number of The Studio.

FROM A DRAWING

BY REMBRANDT

174