Drawings and Studies of George Belcher

The drawings and studies
OF GEORGE BELCHER. BY
J. B. MANSON.
The career of a black-and-white artist is not
the most enviable one. In the first place his
work is generally known to the public only
through the medium of press reproduction,
which is a process, for the most part, destruc-
tive of the fair bloom of really fine work,
resulting too often in the production of some-
thing in the nature of a travesty of the original
drawing. This, of course, applies chiefly to
work of genuine artistic quality, work which
possesses other merits and qualities than those
of mere accuracy of draughtsmanship. Ordi-
nary drawings made expressly for reproduction
may submit to processes without such entailing
extraordinary or important sacrifices, but work
such as that of George Belcher, which is of
a subtlety and a delicacy quite remarkable,
almost invariably loses in reproduction to a
degree which ends in the production of a work
bearing but a remote relationship to the subtle
qualities of the original. Modern improvements
in process work lay the artist, in these days,
less at the mercy of the reproducer than
formerly, and George Belcher has, indeed, less
to complain of than had so great an artist as
Charles Keene, whose work so suffered in this
way that the full flower of its exquisite beauty
remained practically unknown. A sight of
Keene’s original drawings must come as some-
thing of a revelation to one who has known
his work only through reproductions in various
periodicals and books; and so, to a less degree,
is the case with George Belcher. Moreover—
and this is typical of the incompleteness of our
native comprehension of what constitutes a
work of art—drawing which finds its raison
d'etre in the expression of humorous character
is not considered by the populace as having
any real connection with art.
To the lay nnnd, the phrase “ a fine artist ”
calls up visions of huge canvases, paintings of
historical pageants, sentimental episodes or
religious ecstasies. That the phrase may be
less vulgarly interpreted is, however, beginning
to be more generally recognised, although the
idea that an artist may draw inspiration from
the ranks of people not usually associated with
beauty or refinement is still a strange one to
many people, notwithstanding the now general
appreciation of the work of Daumier, Phil
May, and other artists.
XLIII. No. 170.—April, 1911.

“Tothe select few,” says Mr. George Moore,
“the great artist is he who is most racy of his
native soil ; he who has most persistently cul-
tivated his talent in one direction only ... he
who has lived upon himself the most avidly.”
Such a description, incomplete though it
be, is peculiarly applicable to George Belcher.
His appreciation of, and sympathy for, charac-
ter, especially for what is most humanly humor-
ous in character, directed his attention from the
outset to the middle and lower classes, the only
departments of contemporary life wherein ori-
ginal character may still be studied in native
and spontaneous naivete.
The possession of definite faculties and the
gift of particular sympathies must, psycho-
logically, govern an artist’s choice of subject.
Inevitably he must grope about until he finds


STUDY: “a LONDON ‘CABBYBY GEORGE BELCHER
85