Frank Reynolds, R.I.
by A.E. Johnson.
PREFACTORY NOTE
In presenting under the title of "Brush, Pen, and Pencil" the series of books of which the present volume forms part, the publishers feel that they are meeting a demand which has long existed but has hitherto not been supplied. It is an unfortunate circumstance of the conditions which affect the modern artist who chooses black and white for his principal medium, that as a general rule his work--or, at all events, the reproduction of it--is ephemeral only.
In respect of much that appears in the illustrated Press this is small matter for regret; but there is good reason to believe that opportunities of obtaining in permanent form some record of the work of the leading men amongst those artists who work for the Press would be welcomed. It is to afford such opportunities that the present series is issued; and it is hoped that in the volumes composing it the public will have pleasure in finding representative examples of the work with brush, pen, and pencil of the men whose skill and fancy have from time to time delighted them.
For permission to reproduce a very large number of the drawings by Mr. Frank Reynolds which appear in the present volume the publishers wish to acknowledge the courtesy of the proprietors of the _Sketch_, in the pages of which they first appeared. Their thanks are equally due to Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew & Co. Ltd. for kind permission to reproduce three drawings from the pages of _Punch_.
_FRANK REYNOLDS._ I.
It has been said of Tolstoy, anatomising the grim skeleton of human nature, that his writings are more like life than life itself. Of Frank Reynolds, with gently satirical pen and pencil depicting the superficial humours of modern life, it might be said that his drawings, too, are more humanly natural than real flesh and blood.
It is the peculiar faculty of the true observer that his eye pierces straight to the heart of what he sees, and his mind, disregarding mere detail, thereby receives and retains a clear perception of the essential, which those of less clear and direct vision fail to grasp more than momentarily, though they hail it with instant recognition when in its naked simplicity it is set before them.
The process is unconscious, or at least but semi-conscious; for your professed observer has never that keen insight which, being native, is not to be acquired by even the most assiduous practice, and alone permits of truthful analysis.
[Illustration]
In the making of the genuine humorist the faculty of observation is the first necessity. Consider the great pictorial humorists, whether dead or living, whose names are familiar in the mouth as household words. That they gained acknowledgment by masterly handling of the medium in which they chose to work is not to be denied.
It is by the peculiar distinction of his technique, indeed, that the work of each, in a general way, is called to mind. But this fame was not achieved solely upon purely artistic merits. Charles Keene, George du Maurier, Phil May, Raven Hill, Bernard Partridge--it is rather for the happy fidelity of their transcripts from life than for the artistic sureness of their hands that they are and will be remembered.
It is the possession of just that subtle power of quiet but comprehensive observation which has obtained for Frank Reynolds the unique position which he occupies amongst the humorous artists of to-day.
[Illustration: LITTLE WILLIE: You'll catch it, Gerald, when mother sees you!
GERALD: Why? Is my collar dirty?
_From "Punch."_]
For unique his position is. Other men are as funny as he, perhaps funnier. For when a determined man sets out with a fixed and unshakeable resolve to tickle your fancy, there is no limit to the means he may adopt to catch you unawares, and it shall go hard with him but he extorts from you a laugh, however tardy. Frank Reynolds makes no such desperate efforts. One might say, indeed, that he makes no effort at all. His simple method is to set down--with the most refined and delicate art--just one of those little scenes or incidents which everyone may every day everywhere witness.
[Illustration]
Spectators of such a scene in real life, it is possible--probable, in fact--that we were in no way edified or amused. Not the veriest ghost of a smile, it is likely, flickered across our faces. But reproduced by the subtle humour of the artist, the inherent comedy of the situation stands revealed, and we chuckle. And our enjoyment is the greater for the skill with which the means are concealed by which this magical transformation is effected. We feel that we have discovered the comedy ourselves, not that it has been shown to us. The characters are so perfectly natural, so precisely as we know them and have seen them day after day. The secret lies in the artist's power of restraint. He exaggerates, he caricatures,--he must do so to bring his point home to our dull wits. But he does it with such nicety that the exaggeration and the caricature are unnoticed. Indeed, the terms are misleading. It is better to say that he _emphasises_.
Frank Reynolds reminds me, if he will forgive my saying so, of a certain profane 'bus-driver whom I have the privilege to number amongst my acquaintance. With this close student of human nature I have had the good fortune to enjoy frequent conversations, and many are the gestures which I recall of the whip-hand towards the pavement, accompanied by the remark (in effect), "Lumme, what funny things a bloke _do_ see!" I confess freely that often I should entirely miss, but for the observant jerk of the whip, the said "funny thing"; and it is just that service which the friendly busman renders to me, as it appears to my mind, that Frank Reynolds performs for the community at large. It is precisely those commonplace "funny things," whether they be persons, scenes, incidents, conversations, or casual remarks, that happen under our very noses, which he excels in depicting; and it is precisely the commonplace familiarity of them that invests them with their peculiar flavour and charm.
[Illustration: THE INTRODUCTION.
_Time Sketch: London Sketch Club._]
Of the fine qualities of Frank Reynolds' technique the reader can judge for himself from the varied specimens of the artist's work which are reproduced in the present volume. His pencil drawings represent, perhaps, his more familiar style, one reason of the association of his name with this medium in the public mind being the comparative rarity of its use for the purposes of reproduction.
Certainly it will be conceded that pencil, soft and amenable, with its opportunities for delicate manipulation, is admirably adapted to the interpretation of those refined shades of meaning and expression which constitute the characteristic charm of Reynolds' drawings, and of his masterly handling of it there can be no two opinions.
[Illustration]
His early drawings for publication were in line, and it was not until his work in the illustrated press had appeared for some time that he began to substitute pencil for pen-and-ink. His first experiments in pencil were made at the Friday evening meetings of the London Sketch Club, and it was at the suggestion of a fellow member of that cheery coterie, his friend John Hassall, that he adopted the softer medium for the purposes of reproduction.
The excellence of his pencil drawings notwithstanding, it is in pen-and-ink that Frank Reynolds appears to me to be at his best.
There is a quality about his work in this medium which gives it a peculiar distinction. Always instinct with the most subtle and delicate feeling, there are occasions when his expressive line does more than satisfy. It arrests: revealing in its simple transcription of pose or expression a significance which had previously escaped our shallow observation, but of which the truth is forced upon us. By comparison, one feels that, despite the fine finish of his pencil work, in the latter medium he loses, to a certain extent, the opportunities for that incisive sureness--so suited to his own unerring vision--which pure line affords him. Consider the drawing (on page 32) of the girl singing in a Paris _cafe_.
There is no dependence on aught extraneous for the achievement of the effect sought. Yet here, if ever, a human soul is laid bare in all its naked tragedy.
[Illustration: WORKING PARIS AT LUNCHEON.
_From "Paris and some Parisians"_]
For sheer power in the art of drawing, Frank Reynolds has few equals and no betters. As a draughtsman pure and simple, he seems to me well-nigh perfect, whether he has pen, pencil, or stump of charcoal in his hand. It is the great merit of his work, as it appears to me, that it depends for the achievement of its intention solely on its own intrinsic qualities. It has no tricks, no mannerisms, no "fakements" to distract the attention and conceal weaknesses.
It is straightforward, direct in its appeal, self-reliant in its challenge.
[Illustration]
To quote the words of a critic of discernment, as he passed from drawing to drawing, "Frank Reynolds is right, right--right every time." This is praise to which one can hardly add.
[Illustration: THE DARE-DEVILS.
_From "Social Pests."_]
_FRANK REYNOLDS._ II.
Frank Reynolds is yet another in the long list of artists who have arrived at their true vocation by devious routes. There are certain tendencies of mind which, when a man has them, refuse to be suppressed.
The journalistic instinct is one of them. Do what you will with the man in whom it is planted, he can never keep his fingers from the pen. Make him a doctor and you will find him scribbling columns for the press on hygiene in the house and the benefits of breathing through the nose. Send him into the army and he will fill his leisure by writing tales of tiger-shoots and essays on the art of pig-sticking.
So with the artist. The man born with the gift to draw finds as irresistible a fascination in pencil or brush as the man with the power of narrative discovers in ink and paper. Whether he serves before the mast as an A.B., or cattle-ranches out west, sooner or later he is certain to drift into his proper sphere of activity.
It may take long to get there, but eventually he is bound to arrive.
In the case of Frank Reynolds the period of bondage was comparatively brief. Entering at first upon a business career, he had originally no prospect, nor intention, of developing his artistic impulses.
He had scarcely, indeed, a suspicion of his own powers--certainly no proper knowledge of their latent possibilities. But commerce had little interest for him, and circumstances which offered an opportunity of escape combining with a happy chance which suggested a higher artistic (and monetary) value for that faculty for drawing which previously he had regarded in the light of a mere hobby, caused him to throw up his earlier plans and devote himself entirely to black-and-white illustration.
[Illustration]
There had been preparation for this, however. The son of an artist, Frank Reynolds inherited his native talent, and this was developed in no small measure during boyhood under his father's guidance. It was the chief delight of Reynolds junior to "mess about" (as he himself succinctly puts it) with the palette and tools of Reynolds senior, and the licence thus permitted enabled him to discover for himself much of the rudiments of the craft of the draughtsman and painter. More was learned from long and absorbed contemplation of his father at work.
[Illustration: "CHACUN" WITH HIS "CHACUNE".
_From "Paris and some Parisians"_]
If early inclinations were of more lasting duration than is their wont, it is likely that Frank Reynolds would now be known to fame as a painter of martial types and gory battlefields. With him the fascination which soldiers and all things military have for the boyish mind took the form of an intense eagerness to reproduce in colour and line the gay pageant of the march. The skirl of the fife and the tattoo of the drum inspired him with a desire, not to shoulder a gun, but to seize a pencil. There was a shop in Piccadilly where water-colour sketches of military types might frequently be seen displayed to view, and to Reynolds junior a tramp thither of several miles from the far west of London was as nothing, could he but have the ecstatic joy of gazing, with nose flattened against the window-pane, upon these transcendent works of art, for an hour or more on end.
[Illustration]
This early training, to be regarded as the sure foundation upon which the artist's later education was to rest, owed not a little, perhaps, of its effectiveness to its casual and desultory nature.
The natural bent was allowed to reveal itself: development was gradual, and (as it were) automatic. Individuality was neither crushed nor cramped. On the contrary, it was given full play, and that the work of Frank Reynolds is invested with so definite a quality of personality is due in no small degree to the special circumstances of his youthful training.
Heatherley's, in Newman Street, London, was his only school. Here, for some time after his final abandonment of commerce for art as the serious business of his life, Reynolds was a close and persistent student. That conscientious care which presents itself to those who are cognisant of his method of work (and, indeed, to any intelligent critic of his finished drawings) as one of his most salient characteristics was a feature of his days of apprenticeship at Heatherley's. Delight at emancipation from uncongenial occupation was balanced by a sober ambition and a steady purpose. He lived laborious days, laying to heart the lessons of his craft, but he laboured always _con amore_.
[Illustration: BETHNAL GREEN.
_From "Sunday Clothes"_]