The Art of Claude A. Sheftfierson
THE ART OF CLAUDE A. SHEPPER- and draughtsmanship with which their pictorial
SON. BY MALCOLM C. SALAMAN. charm is actiieved; This distinctive quality of
artistic charm which permeates his expression
LOOKING, the other day, through a was inherent in his work from the first, when
number of Claude Shepperson's nearly twenty years ago he began to make his
sketches and drawings, I was re- mark among the book-illustrators who counted.
' minded of a remark of Whistler's, With imaginative insight into the poetry,
after a chance meeting with Charles Keene, to romance, or humour of character and incident,
whom he had just introduced me : " In the and a facile individual handling of pen and ink,
Paris studios they treasure Keene's ' Punch ' as, later, of water-colour, his temperament has
drawings as works of art, but here the people found pictorial appeal in books so varied as
look upon him only as an illustrator of Cock- Borrows " Lavengro " and Disraeli's " Con-
ney humour." Now I wonder how many of ingsby," Leigh Hunt's " Old Court Suburb,"
" Punch's " readers, who are wont to laugh Scott's " Heart of Midlothian," the poems of
week after week at the humorous legends Burns and of Keats, E. V. Lucas's " The Open
appended to Mr. Shepperson's drawings, realize Road, ' Eden Phillpotts' " Up-along and Down-
how entirely independent of the verbal inter- along," and Goodchild's " Caravan Days."
pretation is the artistic appeal of those drawings And whether his pictorial adventures have been
through the spontaneous grace of composition amid the scenes and manners of other days/or
the prodigal son "
LXXVI. No. 314.—May 1919
etching by claude a. shepperson, a.r.w.s.
113
THE ART OF CLAUDE A. SHEPPER- and draughtsmanship with which their pictorial
SON. BY MALCOLM C. SALAMAN. charm is actiieved; This distinctive quality of
artistic charm which permeates his expression
LOOKING, the other day, through a was inherent in his work from the first, when
number of Claude Shepperson's nearly twenty years ago he began to make his
sketches and drawings, I was re- mark among the book-illustrators who counted.
' minded of a remark of Whistler's, With imaginative insight into the poetry,
after a chance meeting with Charles Keene, to romance, or humour of character and incident,
whom he had just introduced me : " In the and a facile individual handling of pen and ink,
Paris studios they treasure Keene's ' Punch ' as, later, of water-colour, his temperament has
drawings as works of art, but here the people found pictorial appeal in books so varied as
look upon him only as an illustrator of Cock- Borrows " Lavengro " and Disraeli's " Con-
ney humour." Now I wonder how many of ingsby," Leigh Hunt's " Old Court Suburb,"
" Punch's " readers, who are wont to laugh Scott's " Heart of Midlothian," the poems of
week after week at the humorous legends Burns and of Keats, E. V. Lucas's " The Open
appended to Mr. Shepperson's drawings, realize Road, ' Eden Phillpotts' " Up-along and Down-
how entirely independent of the verbal inter- along," and Goodchild's " Caravan Days."
pretation is the artistic appeal of those drawings And whether his pictorial adventures have been
through the spontaneous grace of composition amid the scenes and manners of other days/or
the prodigal son "
LXXVI. No. 314.—May 1919
etching by claude a. shepperson, a.r.w.s.
113