William Henry Bartlett: Artist, Author, and Traveller by Alexander M. Ross (review)

HUMANITIES 399 preciation of his review of the novel. Dallas' otherwise lukewarm review is distinguished by his approval of the naturalness of the characters, and especially of Dickens's concern for social wrongs. But Gold's book is not merely a rehash of the sort of things that Hunt, Dallas, and others were saying; he goes beyond them in tracing the development of Dickens's moral vision from a satiric anatomy of society in the early works, to a deeper analysis of the internal conflicts of the individual characters in the later novels. Yet, in addition to this is the awareness, as you read, that the book is not merely a well-researched work of scholarship , but rather a labour of love by one who has experienced that sense of wonder and awe that occurs in the presence of great art. W e are already indebted to Joseph Gold for his recently published Dickens: A Centenary Bibliography; we are far more so for his even mare impressive achievement in Charles Dickens: Radical Moralist. (ALEC BRICE) Alexander M. Ross, William Henry Bartlett: Artist, Author, and Traveller. University of Toronto Press, ix, 164, $15.00 William Henry Bartlett (1809-54) is well known to Canadian readers as the illustrator of Canadian Scenery, but Alexander M. Ross is interested in the whole man and the whole of his work. Bartlett was an Englishman trained under John Britton the topographer, and in the age immediately preceding that of the camera-clicking, globe-trotting tourist, he became one of the more distinguished of a band of professional artists who specialized in tbe depiction of scenery and sites of historical interest, and who depended for a livelihood upon the vogue for the sumptuouslyillustrated travel-book. He was himself an intrepid traveller, and North America ( he also illustrated American Scenery) represents only a small section of his interests. The Holy Land was perhaps his favourite subject, but England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Sicily, Switzerland, Holland, Italy, and southern France all provided him with congenial material for his art. Professor Ross is a teacher of literature rather than art, and his exploration of Bartlett's life and the tracing of his works seem to have been 'amateur' occupations in the best sense of that much-abused word. As a result, his book is not confined to a narrowly speCialist field of interest. He makes no exalted claims for Bartlett, but presents him as a competent, accurate, and more than usually conscientious artist whose work in portraying now vanished bUildings and radically changed beauty spots 400 LE'liERS IN CANADA has as much a historic as a purely artistic interest. His discussion of the artistic qualities of the water-colours and prints is informative without being unduly technical, and his demonstration of Bartlett's tendency to repeat various basic formulae relating to perspective and composition, though hardly adding to Bartlett's stature as important artist, is well illustrated by the shrewd juxtaposition of reproductions. An identical tree performing the same framing function in engravings of Hallowell ( Picton ), Ontario, and of Manningtree, Essex, is one of the more engaging examples. The text of the book is divided between Ross's own 'twentieth-century view' and a Victorian equivalent, William Beattie's Brief Memoir (1855), the main source for Bartlett's biography and here reprinted in full. Beattie's contribution has the additional interest of being a period piece - a short but otherwise representative example of the pious-toned, leisurely-paced, moralistically impeccable Victorian eulogy - while Bartlett's death and burial at sea affords Beattie scope for a suitably dramatic and elevated fi nale. The book contains a portrait of Bartlett, one colour reproduction, and thirty-five black and white illustrations from his paintings and engravings. Admirably designed by Allan Fleming, it is a pleasure to read with its attractive proportions and pleasant combinations of type. My sole criticism lies in the regret that for some reason it was not possible to make specific reference at appropriate points in the text to the illustrations, which are not presented in chronological order and are therefore difficult to locate when needed. But this is a minor qualification. Modestly priced by presentday...