Sir Lancelot du Lake, by Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ROI, RWS 1872-1945

Sir Lancelot du Lake

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ROI, RWS 1872-1945

Pen and ink

c.1898

Described in the caption simply as an "Illustration"

Source: E.B.S. (in The Studio, 107)

The artist's illustration for an old ballad of the same title is roundly criticised in the Studio commentary. It strikes "E.B.S." as "less mature" than Brickdale's other works, especially compared with the work of two of the most distinctive illustrators of the day. [Commentary continues below.]

Formatting and text by George P. Landow and Jacqueline Banerjee.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Internet Archive and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

"E.B.S." feels that here "The use of solid blacks is not quite mastered; indeed, the black horse of the knight to the right is only deduced by Socratic methods after some study as to what the patches in question cannot be intended to represent" (104). This is a valid complaint, but Brickdale is being judged here against the very highest standards:

It is always a difficult problem to mix conventions. Pure outline with solid blacks in masses as Mr. Beardsley used it, or bold outline with very little if any solid blacks in the foreground, as Mr. Walter Crane has so often worked it, one can accept; but here, as in a recent edition of The Faerie Queene and not a few modern designs, we are confronted with a puzzle rather than a pattern, a problem in place of a picture. The puzzle may be ingenious, the problem admirably resolved; but one prefers a picture to be a picture. [104-6]

Bibliography

E.B.S. "Eleanor F. Brickdale, Designer and Illustrator." The Studio [London] Vols. 11-13, Vol 13 (1898): 103-8. Internet Archive. Contributed by Robarts Library, University of Toronto. Web. 28 December 2018.

Created 28 December 2018