Studio: international art (14.1898)

Expressive Line

from a drawing

BY FLAXMAN

177

most of all contributed! How
it differs, most of all, from Du
Maurier’s ! Not that I would
underrate for a moment the
steady elegance of Mr. Du
Maurier’s work : its complete-
ness — acquired seemingly
laboriously—within its recog-
nised limits. But so many
lines, after all, where, per-
haps, there might have been
so few. And the medium,
visibly a little hard, a little
rigid. The mere method of
Charles Keene—the method
to which we confine our-
selves—the mere method is
so different. The selection
of line, how economical, and
how severe !

But, if it is severity, if it
is economy, if it is charm of
“ line ” we want to illustrate,
must we not in fairness turn,
too, to a great artist half
forgotten by the public, and
never properly appreciated—
the artist, above all things, of
exquisite suggestion—I mean
Flaxman ? The public, so
far as it knows of him at all,

knows of him as a sculptor.
But he wrought exquisite
book-illustrations, and so
fertile in ideas was he, that,
as regards his sculptured
pieces, they do not embody
and carry out a hundredth
part of the designs that came
so easily to his great mind
and noble vision. And,
whether in sculpture or in
pencilled design, or in draw-
ings in Indian ink, I like
him best of all perhaps when
he is simplest. What a
classic austerity, what a re-
fined yet intimate truth, in
the sculptured panel, the
low relief, at Bath !—Dr.
Sibthorpe, the botanist, cul-
ling a flower. And the some
hundred drawings at Univer-
sity College, and the drawings
at the British Museum! I
went to the Museum print-
room—the home of drawings
as well as of engravings—and
from two Solander cases I
chose two drawings. One of
them is but of two figures,
but in a dozen lines only.

FROM A DRAWING

BY FLAXMAN