Studio: international art (66.1915)

Charles Robinson

Robinson will admit a deeper,
stronger influence in the style
and sentiment of Mr. Laurence
Housman’s expressive designs;
while the wonderful precision
of Diirer’s line and the noble
beauty of that master’s designs
have no less sensibly influenced
and inspired our artist. Per-
haps to these we may trace
that precision of technique and
orderliness of design that give
“sweet reasonableness” to his
most playful and fanciful con-
ceptions as well as to his most
imaginative.

There is nothing of the realist
about Charles Robinson, yet
his imagination responds • so
vivaciously to the suggestions
of the fabulous, the romantic,
the elfish and fantastic, that
his pictorial vision has a very
persuasive, not to say con-
vincing, appeal. So he has
proved himself an ideal illus-
trator of fairy tales, nursery
rhymes and fables, while his
toy-books have been the delight
of thousands of nurseries.
Perhaps his illustrative genius
has never had happier oppor-
tunity for whimsical intuition
than in “The Big Book of
Fables’ (Blackie and Son), a
delightful volume of pictorial
witchery, in which with pen
and ink, occasionally supple-
mented with water-colour, the
artist has touched to a
fresher visual life the old
fables that are for ever
young. With what a sly relish of actuality he seems
to have drawn these fabulous happenings among
the beasts, the birds and the humans ! Yet always
with what artistic loyalty! In the example given
here, The Tivo Travellers and a Bag of Money,
note how the slight black masses cleverly disposed
through the design give accent to the fine line-
work which makes the picture. The book is full
of gems that afford artistic satisfaction as well. as
pictorial titillation. How completely decorative is
the page with the Fox and the Leopard and the
initial letter A ! Then, the Peacock Complaining,

“ DUCKS.”
PEN-
DRAWING
BY CHARLES
ROBINSON

the Crane and the Wolf, for chance examples—what
happy expression in simplest black and white!
The coloured drawings, too, such as the sumptuous
“ Peacock and Crane,” “The Rat’s Council,” “The
Fox and the Grapes,” how harmonious the intimacy
between design and colour-scheme, which is always
nicely regulated by the limitations of the repro-
ductive process. A joyous thing, this “Big Book
of Fables.”

A more natural expressiveness, a richer sense of

decorative effect,
one finds in Mr.
Robinson’s illustra-
tions to Shelley’s
“Sensitive Plant,”
as may be judged
from the ornately
conceived and
highly elaborate
design for an end-
paper reproduced
here. With many
exquisite drawings
the artist has re-
sponded worthily
to the pictorial in-
spiration of the
immortal poem.
To Mr. Robinson,
and to no artist
more surely, “ a
garden is a love-
some thing, God
wot”; and whether
in leafy and floral
simplicity, or in
landscaped and ter-
raced splendour,
its romance moves
him always to
happy and charm-
ing picturings. To
this the various
garden books he
has illustrated bear
convincing testi-
mony : ‘‘The

Secret Garden,”
“ The Four Gar-
dens,” “ Our Sentimental Garden,” each, like “ The
Sensitive Plant,” Mr. Heinemann’s publication.

Mr. Robinson, however, is not only an illus-
trator of other men’s books, a pictorial interpreter
of the dreams and fancies and visions of others ;

“going down the tube

LIFT.” FROM “THE PRAM
PILGRIMS.” BY CHARLES
ROBINSON