Studio: international art (14.1898)

P. J. Billinghurst

whom Mr. Billinghurst has taken for model, but to
look at the work on its own merits, and acknow-
ledge frankly that the likeness is far more in acci-
dents of framing, lettering and line than in subject
or its interpretation.

It is unusual to find animals attracting a modern
student. Possibly for two reasons: first, that of late
animal portraiture has discarded the old conven-
tional rendering and calls for subtlety of insight
and analysis of character to a degree scarce below
that required for the highest class of human por-
traiture, and next because even the most difficult
animal to draw—the genres homo—still appears in
much decorative line work as a symbol rather than

an image, and the artist who only represents men
by wooden dolls shows a strange timidity, which
prevents his treating the rest of a Noah’s Ark in
similar fashion.

Mr. Billinghurst has steered midway between
the extremes of symbolism and photographic
realism; his animals are not individuals as Mr.
J. M. Swan, for one, depicts them, nor are
they entirely conventionalised hieroglyphics which
we recognise as we recognise pictures, cupids,
cherubim and angels by certain formula?, not by
comparison with our own observation. In short,
his beasts, birds, and fishes are of the fauna of
fairyland and fancy, rather than of fact.

It is hard, in discussing
publicly the work of a student,
to avoid taking him as a
text, and reading a sermon
on the innocent cause j or
to do justice to his merit
without using praise that
may easily defeat its end.
In private conversation a
frank criticism may escape
the charge of censure, be-
cause it is possible to mingle
equally frank approval with
it. But in print the first
may appear brutal and unde-
served, and the second hyper-
bolic and equally undeserved.
Therefore, at the risk of re-
ducing the subject of one’s
discourse to a mere speci-
men whence to draw various
morals, it seems more decent
to leave Mr. Billinghurst’s
work to plead for itself, to
make its own friends, and
explain (as it does quite
clearly) his aims and his ideas
of modern illustration. Look-
ing closely into it one quality
is apparent—a delightful sense
of humour, which is never
too common to incur the
danger of being undervalued.
For humour is the salt of art,
and gives a certain humanity
to the most lofty conceptions.
In nearly all the greatest
canvases of the National
Gallery it is evident. Scarce
any subject is too solemn for