Studio: international art (88.1924)

EDMUND J. SULLIVAN

" ESSAYS IN QUIXOTRY." UN-
PUBLISHED PEN DRAWING BY
EDMUND J. SULLIVAN, A.R.W.S.

redeem a bad character. And did illus-
trator ever enrich a page with a greater
little masterpiece than the headpiece to
the chapter on " Editorial Difficulties t "
Yet it was only after Sullivan had been
trying for two or three years to find a pub-
lisher for this work that the late Gleeson
White, the Studio's first editor, induced
George Bell & Sons to publish it in 1898.

Sullivan did not actually seek a book-
illustrator's career, he drifted into it;
yet there were factors in his early training
that seemed to prepare him for it. The
son of " Sullivan of Hastings," as his
father was familiarly called, one of the
finest art-teachers of his day, and the
second elected President of the Society
of Art Masters, the future master of
illustration was, so to speak, born in an
art-school. There a strict and thorough
training gave him a good working equip-
ment, so that when as a boy he was given
the run of Mr. Ionides's fine collection of
pictures by Watts, Rossetti, Whistler,
Burne Jones, etc., he was quick to appre-
ciate their art. In the National Gallery he
copied pictures; with his father along
the coast near Hastings he would sketch
from nature, but he could never share his

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father's enthusiasm for Turner and Ruskin.
People interested him ; he wanted to draw
human beings, especially to involve them
in allegories after the manner of Watts,
Blake and Michelangelo. Vast abstrac-
tions with capital letters, such as Love,
Death, Time, Space, Eternity, seemed
to him the only subjects worthy of his
attention, and G. F. Watts was his hero.

In 1889, just before he was twenty,
Sullivan came to London and took a
few drawings on chance to the " Graphic "
office. The late W. L. Thomas recognised
his ability,and sent him atonce to sketch the
happeningsof acurrentdockstrike. Thence-
forward in the pages of the " Graphic,"
"English Illustrated Magazine," "Pall Mall
Budget," "Yellow Book," and Pennell's
book on " Pen Drawing," Sullivan's pen-
and-ink drawings, with their individuality
of conception and linear distinction, gradu-
ally attracted attention. Then in 1895 the
young artist made his first adventure as
a book-illustrator. This was with Borrow's
" Lavengro," in Macmillan's series of" Il-
lustrated Standard Novels," for which, as
well as for the same publishers' " Cranford
Series," he illustrated many other books.
Since then i Well, is there any other
living illustrator with a wider range of
achievement, judged not only according
to diversity of subject and appropriate
variety of method, but to his extraordinary
mental and artistic adaptability to the
minds and moods of so many different
writers of marked individuality while pre-
serving his own with unmistakable
mastery i Think of those wonderful
drawings for the " French Revolution," the
beautiful " Omar Khayyam " series ; and
these two exquisite pencil drawings from
the"01d Court Suburb,"withLeighHunt's
gentle urbanity so delightfullyalive in them.
But you have only to look at Sullivan's
illustrations to " Maud " and " The Dream
of Fair Women," "The Vicar of Wake-
field," "The Compleat Angler," "The
Rivals " and " The School for Scandal," to
feel that you know your Tennyson, your
Goldsmith, your Izaak Walton, and your
Sheridan better than ever; while the
strangely imaginative drawings in Diirer's
manner for " Sintram and his Com-
paninos " will freshen your interest in the
author of" Undine." a a a