Studio: international art (15.1899)

Designs for Cloth. Bindings

his sketches have been especially attributed to of the West might be studied with advantage in

alcoholic excitement; but there is really far more place of the conventions which had retarded the

of the humorous and grotesque in these than of the evolution of the art of the Far East. As a painter,

horrible : they are burlesques, and could scarcely he was second to none in his school in the skill

alarm the timidity of a child. In spite of his and swiftness with which he wielded his brush ; and

eccentricity he was a man of liberal ideas, for his work has qualities of sincerity, strength, and

although he wisely adhered to the art principles originality that will give it a high value in the eyes

which from childhood had been a part of his of every lover of art of every nationality,

being, he saw clearly their limitations. He realised William Anderson.
in his drawings of birds how much beauty lay
in truthful observation, and he understood how

much was lost by the failure to carry that observation _ _ T,T ,,„„ unnTiTrir. t^t-

. .. , . TT . M It K. lAFWlPs MORRIS S DE-

mto the representation of higher motives. He knew, 1% /■ CTl~ATC -m-r, /-t attt

t .X. i r i,- u u u a 1, W /■ SIGNS FOR CLOTH BIND-

too, that the only medium with which he had been

M

INGS.

taught to work was not the most suitable for the highest

efforts of the brush, and he admitted that the science -A. T JL Reference has already been

made in these pages to Mr.
Talwin Morris's designs for

;--; -; "~ ~ " I cloth bookbindings. But

now that a selection of his
work in this department
can be illustrated, it is
necessary to reiterate the
appreciation already be-
stowed, especially as it is
supported by pictorial evi-
dence. These designs, it
must be remembered, are
not for limited editions of
high-priced volumes, pre-
pared for the purpose of
appealing only to the few
who are conscious—per-
haps rather too conscious
—of possessing "cultured"
taste. On the contrary,
they are issued upon popu-
lar volumes intended for the
general reader. This single
fact would support an opti-
mistic view of the improve-
ment in the taste of the
average unit that makes up
the British public.

Mr. Talwin Morris has
done in this way what Mr.
Selwyn Image with his
cover for "The Tragic
Mary," Mr. Ricketts with
a half-dozen fine schemes,
Mr. Shannon with "Silver
Points," Mr. Laurence
Housmann with " Goblin

ath" from a drawing by kawanabe kiosai Market," " Green Arras,"

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