ART.
GEORGE DU MAURIER.*
WE confess to a certain feeling of irritation with this exhibi- tion, for which Mr. Du Manlier is wholly irresponsible, for it is one caused by the notes of Mr. Henry James which are pre- fixed to the catalogue. These seventeen pages of panegyri seem to us to be out of place in reference to an exhibition such as the one of which we epeak, and they have no critical valuer to justify their insertion. It may be doubted whether the work of a living artist which is seen in reproductions such as those of Punch, is a good subject for collective exhibition ; but there. is no doubt whatever that, if the exhibition be made, no such literary "padding " is needed as that with which Mr. James has- supplied us.
All cultivated Englishmen and Englishwomen have by this- time become fully acquainted with the elementary qualities of this artist's work, and it seems, speaking frankly, to be almost an impertinence for an American novelist to tell us what are- its characteristics ; more especially when he does not seem to, have given these characteristics more than the most superficial study. But perhaps the cause of irritation is really not the some- what exaggerated praise nor the somewhat slight artistic appre. ciation of the work, but the faint tone of condescension whie pervades the preface, which seems, as it were, to disclose u superior being writing for the enlightenment of us dull islatt* When Mr. James tells us, for instance, that" When the name, Du Manlier is pronounced, I think of grace," we feel inclinft. to deny this as the self-evident characteristic of the artist, if only for the pleasure of contradicting the egotistical expression. Allt of which is, no doubt, very wrong ; but on the whole not un- natural, for the solemn repetition with Mr. James's personal authority of what we all know would irritate a saint.
However, we must not dwell upon this subject, bat speak of the drawings themselves ; and the first thing that strikes us that the exhibition is by no means a complete or satisfactory one. It is not complete, because it includes none of the artist's work except that done for Punch, amounting to little more than- half his published illustrations, and necessarily only those of a comic and satirical character. It is not satisfactory, because it does not include many of the best even of the Punch series- The secret of this may be found in a little note which is pre- fixed to the enumeration of the drawings :—" All the drawings- in the exhibition are for sale. The prices may be obtained on, application at the table." The collection is, in fact, composed of those drawings which belong to the artist at the present time, and those are—we will not say inferior, for many of them are first-rate, but, at all events, they are not his most most serious, and sometimes not his best work.
We remark the absence, for instance, of a drawing which appeared in Punch a year or so ago, and which most of as noticed at the time for its extraordinary ability, represent- ing a host and hostess who, living in the suburbs, have been disappointed of all their guests owing to a thick fog. They are dining together solemnly, one at each end of the long table, footmen and butlers standing along the wall between them. From the artistic point of view, this was, perhaps, the most wonderful drawing which ever appeared in Punch, the especial beauty of it being the manner in which the perspective of the- long table, and its setting of flowers, glass, and silver, was rendered. One felt the presence of every possible adjunct of a well set-out table, and yet, on examining the drawing carefully, there was the merest suggestion of the object. The ease of draughtsmanship, and the rendering of light and shade on each piece of plate, or glass, or ornament, was literally wonderful. Again, only to speak of those drawings of the artist's that are specially remembered, there are here none of the illustrations to Esmond, on the whole probably the finest serious work of Mr. Da Manner's life ; nor those to The Adventures of Harry Richmond, nor any of the other Cornhill illustrations. There are none of the illustrations to the series of burlesque novels which appeared in Punch, nor are there any of the large double-
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page drawings in that periodical. It is necessary to dwell upon these omissions ; for were the artist to be judged exclusively by the work which we see here, he would have to be ranked far below his real merit. There is no hint in the work at this exhi- bition of the tragic power which Du Meunier undoubtedly pos- sesses, if we except a drawing in illustration of a German poem. But even this is not to be compared with much -of Du Manner's work, such, for instance, as the magni- ficent picture (for a picture it is in black and white) of "Beatrix " descending the stairs holding a light above her head. This, which is the finest of the Esmond illustrations, is probably the finest illustration of an author's meaning by a -contemporary artist which has been produced in our time. It is, perhaps, not superior in this respect to Mr. Millais' illustra- tions to Framley Parsonage, but at least as true to the author ; and it is as much more tragic as Thackeray was more tragic than Anthony Trollope.
The finest of the series in the present exhibition are, on the -whole, those devoted to satire on the sesthetic mania,—for instance, the celebrated one of the ineffable youth who finds some unmentionable beauties in a picture which is bad in -every conceivable respect, and defeats his matter-of-fict spestioner by saying that the beauty is "in the picktchaw." In this and the other drawings of this series Mr. Du Meunier is seen at his best, in respect of satire. He gains from these a legitimate subject, and one upon which he, in common with every -other genuine artist, feels strongly. And the result is strong and simple work, a little savage in its meaning, but wholly laugh- able on the outside, and treated with, as Mr. James would say, -that sense of beauty and grace for which the artist is so easily -distinguishable, and which may really be said to have to do with the education of taste.
The "Mrs. Ponsonby Be Tompkins" series show him in another, and in our opinion a less favourable, light. In truth, if we may be pardoned for saying it, there is a hint in the artist's social satires on the snob, male and female, the "lion," and the "tuft "-hunter, of the very thing he satirises. One feels a little, on looking at his work, that clothes are, as a kwyer would say, "of the essence of the contract ;" that a -certain amount of drawing-room glitter, gas, exotics, stuffed couch, and grand piano, is necessary to existence. Coats and gowns fit too well not to have had much thought bestowed upon them. A young man in these drawings has always been -educated at Eton or Christchurch; a young woman has a French dressmaker ; a child never walks in the country in anything but high-heeled shoes and silk stockings. And so it is that the satire frequently rings hollow as it falls, -and the knowledge which prompts it seems to spring as much from sympathy as aversion. For Mr. Du Meunier, as he stands revealed by his drawings in Punch, belongs to the drawing-room and Lord's cricket-ground quality of .artists, and deliberately avoids all reference to those unfortu- nate individuals whose boots are thick, whose manners are rough, and whose ways are those of folks "out of society." We do not mean to hint any blame for this limitation; the artist does what he can; but it is the result of an exhibition of this kind to dis- play his weakness as well as his power, and if we are asked to judge his work, it must be judged by deficiency as well as achievement. One can hardly write or -think of him without thinking of his great predecessor, and when one does that, the 'weakness of Du Manlier, as compared to Leech, is singularly -evident; for Leech satirised and laughed at the exaggerations of feeling and passion, at the incongruities and contrasts of life generally, and Du Mealier laughs—or, rather, sneers—at the meannesses and narrowness of that artificial life which we call -Society. As the one was to nature—or, at all events, such -substitute for nature as the ordinary every-day life of men and women here in England used to be—so is the other to that hothouse atmosphere which stretches from Curzon Street to Belgrave Square. In another century, people will go to Leech and laugh with him, feeling no anachronism, but to Da Manlier they will only go as to a dictionary of the follies and a record of the costumes of a byegone time. For somehow the joke seems to have slipped out in the telling (as Artemns Ward used to say, "I seem to have left the laugh out of that '') and only a discreet Society smile is given us in this artist's pic- tures. So far he fails. And so far as his characters are made gentlemen and ladies chiefly by their well-fitting clothes, he fails also. His strength, however, is partly allied to this failure, for in recording a phase of life such as that of London society at the
present day, it is a strength to sympathise with its clothes, to ignore its comic,alities, to make a little discreet amusement out of its minor eccentricities. It is a day of small things, which the artist sets himself to illustrate, and his work, in many respects, is fitting for its purpose. His observation is wonderfully minute, his touch is wonderfully delicate. His chief ideal is a well-dressed woman, his chief loathing a coarse and ill-favoured snob ; the country to him means a fashion- able watering-place or neatly-rolled tennis-ground; his children walk with a maid, his footmen wear powder, his maid- servants might have sprung out of a door on the O.P. side. All, in fact, is as it should be in a well-regulated house, where "life and thought have gone away side by side," and only left shadows of themselves to eat, and drink, and dress and die.
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