Frank Reynolds as a colourist is less known to the general public than Frank Reynolds the black-and-white artist.  It is only of recent years, indeed, that he has turned his attention to painting.  But his work, as seen at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (of which body he was elected a member in 1903) and elsewhere, proves that his skill with the brush is no less than with pen or pencil.  The present volume includes, besides the drawing of Tony Weller just referred to, his picture of “The Warrener,” another fine character-study, exhibited at the Royal Institute in 1907.  “The Introduction,” an example of a “time sketch” done at the London Sketch Club, illustrates the quick readiness with which the artist nimbly catches the spirit of his subject, and the subtle touch which invests his drawing with the evasive quality of atmosphere.  Another Sketch Club study is that of the curate at the play, which bears the title “Frivolity.”  As a study in expression it is amazingly clever:  and it must be a painful and melancholy respect for the cloth which can suppress the smile which it summons.  Even an Archbishop will scarce forbear to snigger!

[Illustration]

It is not uncommon to hear modern black-and-white art in this country decried by some persons—­mostly of that shallow critical class which can praise nothing in the present, and has encomiums only for that which is past.  But while English art can point to such work in black-and-white as Frank Reynolds (to say nothing of others, with whom this volume is not concerned) produces, he must have dull senses who deplores the present and must hark back to the days, let us say, of Charles Keene to find satisfaction for his artistic cravings.

[Illustration:  GOING IT!  SHE:  After this, what do you say to a jaunt on one of the new tubes?]

If it be a merit to add to the gaiety of nations, then Frank Reynolds, on that count alone, deserves of his fellow men more than a passing approbation.  He is something more than a mere jester, however:  his humour but flavours, as it were, a serious study of human nature.  Ignoring, for a moment, the skill and charm of his technique, one feels it to be an accident only that his vehicle of expression is pictorial and not literary.  He occupies amongst artists the place which the novelist holds amongst men of letters.  When to the recognition of this distinction is added a consideration of his artistic ability, per se, his title to the appreciation of men of taste and sensibility must be conceded.

Frank Reynolds is fortunately a young man.  Long may we continue to suffer the good-natured pricks with which his gentle shafts of satire, piercing the cracks in our self-complacent armour, stimulate us; long may we continue, secure in our own self-esteem, rapturously to gloat over the spectacle of our dear friends and neighbours held up, by his whimsical humour, to keen but harmless ridicule.