Caricatures

We have working among us some score of artists who produce humorous drawings week by week, and to whom the term “ caricaturist” is loosely applied. As a matter of fact, we-for even I have been so honoured-do not caricature at all. We take a notion that appears to us interesting, and work it up with various accessories into a more or less humorous drawing. We do not necessarily exaggerate. We reproduce the incongruities of life.There is another kind of humourist who is inaccurately called а caricaturist. He concerns himself chiefly with the persons of our prominent statesmen, and his drawings are political rather than personal skits-his first business being with the political position rather than the personal appearance of his victims. Of course he does caricature to a certain extent. He gets a certain formula- an eyeglass or a double chin or an umbrellato express the personality of his subject in a more or less ridiculous manner, and that is sufficient. He does not intentionally ridicule the whole man, but one or two of his characteristics. “Were he aims at is to present a political allegory. So he turns his man into a cock crowing in a farmyard, or a nurse with a baby, or whatever strikes him as appropriate at the moment. His caricaturing is perfunctory, and I have noticed that, when he draws for a Radical paper, he is apt to idealise Sir William Harcourt.There are others who do so-called “caricatures” of politicians in the Lobby, or of actors and actresses in a new play. These are nearer to being caricaturists, for they aim at ridiculing personal appearances apart from anything else. But their work is seldom real caricature. Possibly they are too good-natured. They exaggerate one or two points and leave the rest approximately correct.Now Max а caricaturist. For him Man exists only to be caricatured and his possibilities revealed, no part of him, from his head to his heel, being more worthy of ridicule than another. If Max sees a little man with nothing particularly strange about him except a big moustache, he goes for that big moustache, it becomes bigger and bigger, until it overwhelms everything else. Everything dwindles beside it, getting smaller and smaller in the right proportion.People have often said of Max, “ Oh, but he can’t draw." I know he can’t correctly reproduce a foot or the shadows on a face, and that his perspective is apt to be a bit primitive; but he makes up greatly for this lack of technical knowledge by a charming freedom of line. There is no stiiïness in his drawings, and some of them are distinctly decorative. Pellegrini (the unforgettable " Ape ”) knew how to draw, and the limbs or features of his subjects, however much he distorted them, were always real limbs or features. Ma» often takes refuge in a sort of symbolism, in order to avoid difficulties of draughtsnlanship. On the whole, I would not advise him to learn drawing seriously-the process would probably cramp him and take from him much of that delightful irreverence for things as they are, which is really one of his strongest points.As it is, Max never draws from the life. I доп’t know that people would consent to sit to him if he wanted them to. When he meets anyone he wishes to immortalise, he looks his victim full in the face-a habit which is often taken to denote his frank and honest nature, until his reason is known. The impression of his subject thus sinks into his mind, and when he sits down to draw, the features stand out in his memory, while the rest are to a great extent ignored. Since “ Ape" there has been no one with such an awful instinct for the principal parts of a man’s appearance. Look at each of these caricatures, and see how one or two things in each are elaborated and magniñed, and how slightly he deals with the rest. His instinct for style and character is wonderful. He gives you a savage epitome of a man’s exterior, and, through that, the quintessence of the man himself.