Studio: international art (33.1905)

Frederick Sandys

touch with the painter by correspondence, and later great painter who survived him but a few days,

into personal relationship with him; and some of my George Frederick Watts, once said, "Some artists

pleasantest recollections are of hours spent in his see, some feel, some imagine—the greatest do all,"

company, listening to his keen comments on men and Sandys not only saw and imagined, he felt as

and matters, enjoying his fund of good stories of well. He was able, too, to visualise his ideals, to

the great men of his day (Rossetti and Tennyson, realise his dreams, and to render them with that un-

Meredith and Swinburne, Millais and Whistler, he erring touch, that resolute draughtsmanship, which

knew them all), and tempting him to dream aloud is so notable a feature of his work; that masterly

of the pictures he meant to paint—pictures now, handling to equal which we must go back to the

alas ! never to be seen of any man. There is in drawings of Diirer and the panels of the Van Eyck.
the members' book of a certain unique little artistic The earliest of the three groups into which his

club a slight and rapid sketch by Raven Hill which work naturally falls comprises the woodcuts and the

gives an excellent idea of his features, but I know drawings made for them, and it is very interesting

of no portrait which conveys to the spectator the to see that even in the earliest of these—the

dignity which belonged to his tall figure, or the illustration to George Macdonald's story of The

aspect of strength and distinction which seemed to Portent—the artist's powers seem mature ; his

me to be so emphatically characteristic of the man. touch is unfaltering, his long, sweeping lines are full

And of his grim and delightful humour, of the of strength, and the figure is rendered with a fine

quiet, level voice in which he related reminiscences feeling for form and contour—is instinct with a

grave and gay, of the queer admixture of cynicism dignity almost sculptural,
and poetry that character-
ised his more intimate

conversation, and of the
fascination of his scholarly
mind and magnetic per-
sonality, there can be no
record but that which re-
mains in the memory of
the few who were privi-
leged to know him. A
man of retiring disposi-
tion, he would never be
lionised; he hated to find
his good stories in print,
and he was apt to feel that
with his life, apart from his
art, the public had no con-
cern,

To turn over the port-
folio in which are stored
the photographs of his
pictures and drawings, and
the signed proof of his
woodcuts, is a perennial
pleasure, so strong, so
varied, and so accompli-
shed are even the least
complete of them. In the
ideal subjects, the artist's
dreams, what beauty lies;
what emotion in the splen-
did woodcuts and pictures ;

what truth and mastery in
the portraits ! Another "miranda" by Frederick sandys

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