Studio: international art (89.1925)

THE ART OF MR. W. HEATH
ROBINSON. BY A. L. BALDRY a

WHEN an artist gains a wide popularity
by dealing regularly with a particular
type of subject matter which makes a
considerable appeal to the public, there
is always some danger that he may not be
given the credit that is due to him for the
quality of his achievement. People are
apt to judge him hastily and superficially
by the results at which he arrives and to
forget how much the manner of his practice
counts in making these results convincing ;
they do not sufficiently appreciate that the
measure of the success he attains in his
work is directly proportioned to the degree
of artistic skill he exercises. a a

In the case of such an artist as Mr.
Heath Robinson, the risk of this mis-
understanding is very real because mainly
his art is of a kind which might seem at
first sight to depend for its popularity
much more upon subject than upon

manner of treatment. The general public
know him best as a pictorial humorist who
has an apparently inexhaustible stock of
funny ideas which serve him as material
for most amusing drawings, and they enjoy
thoroughly the quaintness of his con-
ceptions and the comicality of the way in
which his subjects are presented. That
he is a popular favourite no one would
deny, and that the delightful quality of
his humour justifies the estimation in
which he is held as an inspired jester can
by no means be questioned; to the
position he occupies he is fully entitled.

But it is, perhaps, less widely realised
that the secret of his success as a humorist
is to be sought in the soundness of his
work as a serious artist, that the point of
his comic excursions is made plain by the
artistic resource with which they are con-
ducted. He never forgets that whatever
his subject may be the presentation of it
must be by means of a studied and logical
design and that even the most frivolous