Studio: international art (70.1917)

Hugh Thomson, Illustrator

“THE CONNOISSEURS”

“ Our Village ” “ the playfulness and purity of
Oliver Goldsmith ” without the naughtiness of
his wit or “ the dust of the world’s great road
on the other side of the hedge,” would seem
exactly to voice Mr. Thomson’s sentiments
regarding the lady.

It may come as a shock to the enthusiastic
student of Mr. Thomson to learn that the artist’s
“ scenery,” whether it was for “ Cranford ” (the
Cheshire market-town of Knutsford) or the more
unsophisticated village of Miss Mitford’s fancy,
were all drawn on Wimbledon Common. Knuts-
ford he had never even seen—a fact which
should not surprise us in so thoroughgoing an
idealist. For it is his whimsical idealism which
has been the artist’s chief mainstay, enabling
him to comprehend and enter into the spirit
of such widely different characters as Lady
Castlewood in Thackeray’s “ Esmond ” and the
sapiently grotesque Triplet of “ Peg Woffington,”
the last a pen-sketch on a fly-leaf dedicated to
his friend Austin Dobson.

While on the subject of plays we must not
forget the brilliant illustrations of “ Quality
Street ” exhibited just before the outbreak of war

BY HUGH THOMSON

at the Leicester Galleries.
Published by Messrs.
Hodder and Stoughton,
“Quality Street’’was the
first Barrie play to appear
in book form, and it was
a happy inspiration of
Messrs. Brown and Phillips
to bring the collection
together in a public ex-
hibition at their galleries.
As for “ The School for
Scandal,” issued by the
same publishers, little
need be said at this
juncture. It is a tour de
force, not only of charac-
terization, but of delicious
colour. The artist has an
eye for colour which is at
once subtle, individual,
and delicately and appro-
priately harmonious. It
pleases rather than sur-
prises, and in this trait
endorses the previous
criticism that Mr. Thom-
son’s art belongs emphati-
cally to the, nineteenth century and knows
nothing of the age into which we have lived—
an age so cruel and vitriolic in its manifesta-
tions. Another and a calmer air belongs to
the artist who has so happily illustrated “ Cran-
ford.” We feel that with Mr. Thomson it is
always afternoon and that the winds are tem-
pered to his genial and kindly talent.

The illustrations to this article have a peculiar
value of their own, seeing that they are all
from sketches hitherto unpublished and lent
by the artist for reproduction in The Studio.
Wending Homewards is a robust study of plough
horses newly liberated from their day’s toil.
Harry Lauder, a memory sketch, is inimitable
in its sense of humour, and The Fop, in lead-
pencil, takes us, at a bound, to the Sheridan
era, while Mind and Matter reminds us that
Mr. Elugh Thomson might easily have illustrated
“ John Gilpin.” In the same vein are the pre-
liminary designs for The Wife of Bath and the
sketch called The Connoisseurs. Our coloured
illustration is again one of Mr. Thomson’s initial
designs for “ The School for Scandal,” and is so
characteristic as to need no description.

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