He was known to the writer as one of the most amiable and interesting men in London, and he was quite unspoiled by his brilliant success. The art of such a master in painting as G. F. Watts is evidently removed from the art of Phil May "as far as the east is from the west," and yet that illustrious painter declared: "Other men may have great talent, but to me Phil May was simply a genius." THE CHARLES KEENE HE artistic and literary relations of England and the United States are now become so intimate that famous British writers or illustrators no longer need any detailed introduction to people of taste in America. But the late Charles Keene was one of the exceptions. His ever-growing fame has been slow in obtaining its just due of recognition here. This is partly because of his innate modesty as man and as artist, but mainly because his work was so intensely British. Dürer was not more thoroughly German in his art, Rembrandt more Dutch, or Velasquez more Spanish than Keene was English; and where is the artist so likely to find subjects of real value as in his own country, where he "lives and moves and has his being"? The depicting of ancient classical scenes by David and his school, or of ancient Roman episodes by Alma Tadema, are all very well; but really vital art is the product of the artist's own times, his own country, and his intimate surroundings. It is by no means essential that the man whom posterity delights to honor as a great original artist should have been the producer of ambitious and immense paintings such as those of Rubens. In Paris, where art really is held in reverence, the subject of their latest public canonization was the modest lithographer Raffet, a man who had lived and died poor and obscure, probably having never in his life earned such "big wages" as are paid in New York to a plumber or a bricklayer; but to-day, in the garden of the Louvre, Raffet's monument confronts that of Meissonier. Similarly, during the long years when Charles Keene was producing masterpieces in black and white, his very name was hardly known-although from the very first, certain artists throughout Europe had a way of buying and preserving periodicals containing pictures which bore the modest signature "C. K." Not many days after his death in 1891, I took occasion to make the following mention of him in a lecture delivered before the Grolier Club on the subject of some famous etchers whom I had known: "Keene was a good etcher, but was preeminent as a designer of comic and satirical subjects. For the past thirty years his spirited and thoroughly artistic sketches have appeared almost continuously in the columns of the London Punch. He had not the dainty and elegant touch of du Maurier nor the severe distinction of style of Sir John Tenniel - but he will be missed more than either of these able men would be. No other hand can ever draw as he has done -the farmer, the Scotchman, the Irishman, the 'cabby,' the policeman, the waiter, the landlady, the maidservant, and the common little boy and girl. In "In silence!" Size of the original drawing, 4 by 44 inches. From the drawing in pen and ink by Charles Keene. This subject was redrawn in an elaborated form and was published in "Punch" "LINGUA EAST ANGLICA' Size of the original drawings, 3 by 27 inches. First Angler (to Country Boy). "I say, my lad, just Country Boy (to second angler, in the Eastern Counties language). "Tha' there Bo' shay he want a Wurrum!" |