—A Five-shilling Hit.—

Otago Witness, Issue 2808, 8 January 1908, Page 82

—A Five-shilling Hit. —

I had long had ambitions that way, for I remember that I sold my first artistic effort when I was 11. I drew and painted a sketch, a- very crude sketch, of an old publichouse in Nottingham. It -represented the landlord, a very fat man, with a bibu-lous-looking policeman at&nding by him, saying, " Time, gentlemen, please." The. proprietor, who was delighted ■ with it,-gave me 5s for it, and hung it up. in the taproom. Perhaps that was^ my first -succesßIn spite of the opinion of the artist I havo quoted, I found myself apprenticed to a lithographic firm in Nottingham Jor sevea-*-yeare. There I had to' help to design pos* ters and show cards, and when I was between 16 and 17 I actually did my first poster work. That, however, was long before my posters attracted public notice. The first to do that were some cycling" posters about eight or ten years' ago for the Raleigh, Swift, and Macgregor cycles, and they came before my Cinderella poster for the Drury Lane pantomime, which attracted -more general notice and, if you will pin me down to one particular effort, gave me my first important success in -poster work. It represented, a page trying the slipper • on one of " the ugly sisters' feet. How I came to think of the design I can't tell. It is sufficient that I did; think of it, and, having thought, drew it straight away, without the aid of models, for I never use models for that kind of work.

—A Stable Studio.—

The story of my poster success belongs; - of course, to a much later period o£ my life than that about which I began to speak. When I was, with ttie printing firm I used to work from half-past 8 in the morning until 7 o'clock at nigh£. Although the hours were long, I" determined to try and do something on my own account afc night. I had had a couple of terms jn an, art school, but the method pursued there, did not appeal to me, so with some fellowenthusiasts I hired a room over a small v 6fcable / and we used to draw, taking it in turns to clean the windows and floor. Eventually that night work resolved itself into drawing for the comic papers, though - my first success with a black-and-white drawing frota a monetary point of view dated! back to about the time when I was doing; my first poster. It was a wretched production, which I did for Scraps when -I was about 16, but it was accepted, and I < got paid for it. Later, when I had, acquired) a certain amount of skill, and my work began to be more generally accepted, I deter* -Vcd to come to London, and" did l so as -oon as my articles were .out.*- Fliose were the days when the halfpenny comic papers had a great circulation, and I began. ' drawing as hard as I could. I had been at it a year or two before I thought o£ doing a serial. I suggested it to one editor, who rather liked the idea of a series of drawings related to each other, and ho asked me to think of some subject for tho purpose. It was in that way that I. came to think of my two tramps, Weaiy Willie and Tired Tim, who, I am willing to confess, had' a vogue, and formed what you may, if you like, take as <my first success. Where the idea came from for the tramps I do not know. What Ido know was that it was not difficult to- invent things for them to do. In fact, ife was very simple; 1 so simple that I sometimes felt ashamed of drawing my cheque for the work at the end of the week. Still, I did draw tbo^ cheques with even more alacrity than I drew the figures. I can't, however, oon« fess to any pride in the "work. 'Indeed, I did not sign the drawings, so that the general public was quite unaware of the name of the man who was contributing to its amusement. What I was trying to do in thosp days was to make money. You may ca^ the work pot-boilinpr if you like. I don't mind. What I did mind was that' the idea caught on. It sent. Tin the circulation of the paper in which the drawings appeared, with the result that .my fees increased, and the Weary Willie and Tiredi Tim work became almost the 'best' paid! 1 that I over did in my life. loused to do six drawings in a set every week, and in. consequence of the facility I had had in drawing everything I had come near I didi not use a model, but worked straight ahead.

— Robinson Crusoe. —

One of the series was called Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday. It was really a skit on Monsieur Louis de Rougemont and the wonderful adventures he wrote about in the nages of a well-known monthly periodical. The idea of the two men lent itself to comic treatment, and I kent them going for four or five years, until I got sick of them and dropped them. All the time this had been going on I had been, making a bid for work in the better class naper and the monthly magazines. My first black-and-white success from an artis--tio point of view was a series of cycle sketches done for "the cycle press during the boom of 10 years ago.

—The Dutch Craze.—

With the general public, however, I suppose my first success was with what I may call the Dutch craze in London. It was purely by accident that I took" it up, and ' I rather "fancy that it was I who started what has been called a boom in that country. An artist friend pejrsuaded me to go for a cycling trip in Holland. I got "stuck on" the country, and began drawin? Dutch pictures, the most successful of which, I think, was a series I did for the Sketch, called "The Seven Ages of a Dutchman." It is only quite recently that I have left off making Dutch pictures, because it has seemed to me that Holland was being overdone. So keen was I on the Dutch stuff in painting that my first picture exhibited at the Royal Academy was a Dutchman. Indeed, most of my paintings in the exhibitions have been Dutch— or Spanish— for I have done a good deal of the latter, though I think the former are more popular. Still, the firbii decent picture I ever painted— a success from hit own point of view — was done about 12 years ago, and exhibited at the Nottingham Castle Art Gallery. It -was entitled "Taking a Mean Advantage." and 1 represented two schoolboys tickKng the feet of a tramp in the village stocks, .with the beadle coming on them round tho corner. It waa bought by Messrs Cassell and Co., and used as a- coloured t>!ate for Chums.

— In America. —

My first successful sketching trip jcame thre« years ago. when I went to America and did work for the New York papers. For these sketches I got very well paid. Last year I was commissioned by the Chicaaro Tribune to go Mid live in that city, and do a cartoon for them every day for four mo"*hs. This also was a. very successful trii»-