Drawings by Chas. Johnson and Others

New York: E. R. Herrick & Company, 1898. First Edition. Hardcover. Buckram cloth spine. Paper pastedown on boards. Very Good Plus. Charles Johnson, Scalbert. A retrospective book drawn from "Truth", a periodical, on the popular newspaper and book illustrator, Charles Howard Johnson, who had died in 1896 at just 30 years old or so from a short brain fever, just as he had made his mark. This rather massive book captures some of his whimsy but also his brilliance at setting a scene that tells a story. There are also two artworks by a French Academic artist Jules Scalbert. It is inexplicable to us why these are here, charming though they are. Oblong folio. 35.5 by 52 cm. Unpaginated. Title leaf, table of contents leaf, then 22 large color plates, all based on watercolors, of human genre scenes, idealized, often with an element of fantasy and fantastic or imaginary characters -- imps and fairies, a ghost, etc. All the illustrations have titles and typically a few lines of verse that provide the little explanation or context of the picture. Some of the scenes are of bygone eras -- Colonial America, the American Revolution, the more genteel aspects of the eighteenth century. Young Romance is often the topic, treated with a touch of irony. The lives of the pampered rich are depicted more than anything else -- a ball, a number of beach scenes, etc. But there is also a picture showing stereotyped black slaves, or recently emancipated blacks, dancing a Virginia reel. The general tenor often is sentimental but leavened with wit. The objective is to entertain, not to spark a revolution in graphic art. While the illustrations had a very large appreciative audience, the high brow aesthetes even then surely dismissed them as kitsch, although they might have used different terminology. The binding has scattered soiling -- stains, scratches, pencil lines, etc. The leaves have a card thickness and have a laminated-like surface similar to a table pad on the pictorial side, a dull buff on the versos. These are overall clean. The binding is tight as well.