[Illustration:  Plate LII.

JOHN REDMOND, M.P.

From the drawing in the collection of Sir Robert Essex, M.P., in red conte chalk rubbed, the high lights being picked out with rubber.]

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Another point of view is that of the artist who seeks to give a significant and calm view of the exterior forms of the sitter, an expressive map of the individuality of those forms, leaving you to form your own intellectual judgments.  A simple, rather formal, attitude is usually chosen, and the sitter is drawn with searching honesty.  There is a great deal to be said for this point of view in the hands of a painter with a large appreciation of form and design.  But without these more inspiring qualities it is apt to have the dulness that attends most literal transcriptions.  There are many instances of this point of view among early portrait painters, one of the best of which is the work of Holbein.  But then, to a very distinguished appreciation of the subtleties of form characterisation he added a fine sense of design and colour arrangement, qualities by no means always at the command of some of the lesser men of this school.

Every portrait draughtsman should make a pilgrimage to Windsor, armed with the necessary permission to view the wonderful series of portrait drawings by this master in the library of the castle.  They are a liberal education in portrait drawing.  It is necessary to see the originals, for it is only after having seen them that one can properly understand the numerous and well-known reproductions.  A study of these drawings will, I think, reveal the fact that they are not so literal as is usually thought.  Unflinchingly and unaffectedly honest they are, but honest not to a cold, mechanically accurate record of the sitter’s appearance, but honest and accurate to the vital impression of the live sitter made on the mind of the live artist.  This is the difference we were trying to explain that exists between the academic and the vital drawing, and it is a very subtle and elusive quality, like all artistic qualities, to talk about.  The record of a vital impression done with unflinching accuracy, but under the guidance of intense mental activity, is a very different thing from a drawing done with the cold, mechanical accuracy of a machine.  The one will instantly grip the attention and give one a vivid sensation in a way that no mechanically accurate drawing could do, and in a way that possibly the sight of the real person would not always do.  We see numbers of faces during a day, but only a few with the vividness of which I am speaking.  How many faces in a crowd are passed indifferently—­there is no vitality in the impression they make on our mind; but suddenly a face will rivet our attention, and although it is gone in a flash, the memory of the impression will remain for some time.