CURRENT LITERATURE,
FREDERIC SHIELDS.
The Life and Letters of Frederic Shields, 1833-1911. Edited by Ernestine Mills. With Photogravure Portrait and 41 other illus- trations. (Longmans and Co. 10s. 6d. net.)—Those who know their London well enough to have found the little frescoed chapel of the Ascension in the Bayswater Road are probably inclined to believe that Shields, as an artist, has been a little overrated, that the wall-paintings are a little sentimental and melodramatic— what we are apt loosely to call "a little Early Victorian." Let them remember that Frederic Shields was first a deeply religious man, an artist only second ; the frescoes are the expression and summing up of a life which, from his hard-worked, half-starved boyhood in his parents' tiny shop in Stanhope Street to the days of recognized power and of the friendship of Rossetti and Holman Hunt, was exhausted by a revivalist fervour and by a passionate endeavour to teach men the Gospel by means of art. After the frescoed chapel there was no more work to be done : it was the last word of an art practised, not for Art's sake, but to the glory of God. The chapel was finished in September 1910; in February Shields died. Those, and they are many, who can find no satis- faction in Shields's religious paintings, will yet find themselves held by the indisputable charm of his early pencil sketches and wood engravings, and by the extraordinary interest of his life, apart from his art. His early years were years of real toil and real hardship, glorified for him by the religion which made him sometimes stern and unsympathetic, by the strength of his devotion to Art, and by the genuine love which burnt in the centre of the little family. It is impossible to read without a thrill such an entry in his diary as this : "Wednesday, February 16th.—Got up at half-past six. Cleaned my boots and face, took down the shutters, got breakfast, and went to work by eight. Rubbed down seven inks, drew the winged lion until one. Had dinner, 1 lb. of bread and a cup of coffee, came back and drew until 7, came home got tea, read Coriolanus.' Went to the Mechanics to hear Mr. Hatton's lecture on the music of Handel, Bach, and Mendelssohn. Came home, cleaned the knives and forks, brushed my boots and clothes, went to bed at 12." Surely a wonderful day for a boy of fifteen ! All this delightful material has not been wasted. This is an 'age of women biographers, who, as a rule, would seem to prove worthy of the calling : Miss Mills, at all events, can justly claim her place among them. She has allowed his letters, for the most part, to draw the outline of Shields's life, and in all things has shown herself discreet and appreciative, with the gift of writing good English, and the even rarer gift of withholding her personal estimation of the man.
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