Studio: international art (88.1924)

EDMUND J. SULLIVAN: A
MASTER BOOK-ILLUSTRATOR
BY MALCOLM C. SALAMAN a

FOR me there is no aesthetic pleasure
more stimulating than looking through
a sketch-book of Edmund J. Sullivan's
when he is preparing to illustrate some
literary masterpiece, and his imagination
becomes interpretatively graphic, while
every page affords flashes of intimacy
with the artist's mind as it offers pictorial
light to the author's. For the work of
this master-illustrator realises the true
artistic ideal of book-illustration. It is
no mere pictorial repetition of the author's
verbal description, but every picture has
something of its own to say by way of
suggestive and illuminating comment on
the literary expression, perhaps simply
interpretative, perhaps discovering fresh
meaning, yet always conditioned artis-
tically by expressive design and vital
significant draughtsmanship with decora-
tive rhythm innate. Many of us have long
been convinced that the manwhoillustrated
Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus " and " French
Revolution " is an artist of genius far greater
in power and originality than is yet
popularly recognised, though a wider
fame must acclaim this when it is more
generally remembered that some of the
greatest art ever produced is nothing more
or less than illustration, and that the artist
of genius who can, with the magic of his
pen or pencil, give fresh imaginative life to
the vision of poet, romance-writer,or philo-
sopher, is not necessarily of less account
than the painter of the popular picture.

Sitting with Mr. Sullivan in his studio
the other day, turning the pages of the
sketch-book in which, with his favourite
Brandauer steel pen No. 518, he had been
impulsively sketching his fresh conceptions
of Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and the
happenings in which they were involved,
and, impressed more than ever that
Sullivan is the ideal illustrator of Cervantes,
I tried to make him talk of his theory
of illustration, just as if he had not given
us his masterly book on the art. But he
would only talk of Whistler and Poe and
the beauty of windmills even when they
are grinding no grist. a 0 a
Vol. LXXXVIII. No. 381.—December, 1924.

That is what comes of asking a great
illustrator to explain his theories of the
art when his drawings speak for them-
selves. What, for instance, could be more
eloquent than the illustrations to "Sartor
Resartus" J1 Being told that this book was
impossible to illustrate, Sullivan had taken
up the challenge and set his heart and his
whole mind on achieving the impossible.
The ordinary descriptive illustrator would
never have achieved it, but Edmund
Sullivan brought in response to Carlyle's
philosophic irony so alert an imaginative
irony that his every drawing in the book
is the true artistic complement of the
literary passage that inspired it. And
what superbly significant drawings they
are that compassed this triumph of the
illustrator's art. The Symbol Shop, for
example, reproduced here; how richly
the design suggests all the empty pageantry
of the " once sacred symbols ! " Then
the wonderful drawing that personifies
the whole-hearted Laughter that would

burks at the plough." pen
and pen'cil drawing by
edmund j. sullivan, a.r.w.s.

303