66 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/punchpicturesOOreyn ■ 1 ^ / A It was hit hard and high. But the bowler knew all about it. The Curate felt called upon. The grocer had it all the way. OUR VILLAGE CATCH PUNCH” PICTURES By frank REYNOLDS, R.I. IFITH AN INTRODUCTION BY E. F, LUCAS 1 922 CASSELL AND COMPANY LIMITED LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE arrangement with the ‘Proprietors of ‘PUNCH Printed in Great Britain. INTRODUCTION art and humour of Frank Reynolds stand both on firm B foundations. His drawing is solid and true ; his jokes, most of -A. which he finds for himself, do not make a brief appeal and vanish, but grow better ; you think of them in the night ; for it is in situations rather than in verbal chance that he finds his fun. As the saying goes, he “sees the humour of things.’’ And in his case joke and drawing are interdependent, complementary and one. Like all humorists he has his favourite hunting ground, Mr. Reynolds’s being somewhere on the outskirts of London where City clerks with families have their homes ; and in the process of searching this suburban region for subjects he has evolved a very distinct and recognizable type whose adventures one may follow in this diverting book. You will find him in perfection in the picture of the ancient high bicycle on page 106. Sometimes he takes his clubs to the links, sometimes he goes to Lord’s with his son, sometimes he chalks a cue, sometimes he welcomes in the spring, but he is always an old acquaintance ; we have seen him before, we can’t remember exactly where, but somewhere. The very man, to the life ! For a humorous artist so constantly to persuade us of fidelity to the fact is a triumph, and Mr. Reynolds’s triumph is the greater when we realize that when the War broke out and it was necessary to create a Teutonic type too, he was equal to the occasion. Look at the wonderful bourgeois Germans on pages 40 and 48. Being no draughtsman myself, although constantly excited by draughts- manship, I can say nothing authoritative about Mr. Reynolds as a technician ; but I have seen and compared enough work in black and white to risk the criticism that his power of suggesting atmosphere is very remarkable. For example, take the taxi-load of publicans on page 5 Introduction 103, and the canal scene on page 111, and the wet road on page 53. There is not a stroke too many or too few in any of these. One of the chief difficulties, I take it, that confronts all illustrators of action or dialogue is to catch the right moment. There are so many to choose from that the artist is not to be envied by the slothful. Mr. Reynolds seems to me to be extraordinarily successful — masterly even — in his power of seizing the significant instant of time and holding it. Indeed his gift of holding it is most noticeable. There are so many examples to point to that to particularize is unnecessary, but none the less I invite you to look at the complacent charlady on page 35, at the three girls on page 20, and at the passengers in the railway compartment, on page 50. And — for arrested but perpetual motion — take the cricket scene on page 10, where the little brother is about to tackle so terrific a problem, the conflict between pride and fear. It is as though the magician’s clock had again struck and life were instantaneously suspended. Another of Frank Reynolds’s peculiar qualities is his knowledge of backs. To him backs are as full of character as fronts, and he passes the secret on to us. I doubt if there has ever been a volume containing so many significant backs as this. So far I have been writing of our artist only as the draughtsman week by week in Punchy the paper of which he is Art Editor, and only of his work in black and white. But long before he joined the Round Table he had made a name by his character drawings from Dickens and by water colours that had won him membership of the Royal Institute. Recently he has put this branch of his art at the disposal of Mr. Punch and acquired a new reputation by those delicious parodies of eminent painters old and new which were such a popular feature of the Almanack and Summer Number of 1922. In the Almanack Mr. Reynolds gently but firmly, and with the most delicate fun, pressed into his service the methods of George Morland, Rubens, Turner and Corot for the purpose of extolling the game of golf ; and in the Summer Number he revealed even subtler gifts of burlesque by his travesties of the Academicians of the day, notable among a series of the most brilliant tours de force being 6 Introduction the renderings of Mr. Sims, Mr. Munnings and Mr. Arnesby Brown. Pictorial parody, in colours, was a neglected field ; Mr. Reynolds in a moment made it his own. It was as brighteners of cricket that, the other day, these R.A.s were brought together with such dexterity and mischief, and it is a sign of Mr. Reynolds’s steady devotion to the best of British games that the earliest drawing in this volume, dated June 6, 1906 (it is on page 9), deals with one of cricket’s minor but not negligible difficulties. Finally, a word as to Frank Reynolds in his capacity as a war- winner. I am not referring at the moment to his duties either in the 4th Cheshires or with M.T. 7B. They, I am sure, were carried out with his usual quiet thoroughness. I am referring to the famous drawing which will be found on page 42 of this volume, entitled “ Study of a Prussian Household having its Morning Hate.” This picture, which appeared in the issue of Punch for February 24, 1915, is held by several good judges to have done more to destroy the moral of the foe than many more ambitious forms of attack. “An enemy,” it argued, “that can laugh like that is to be feared indeed ! ” E. V. LUCAS. 7 W' I 1 4 ^- \ “PUNCH” PICTURES BY FRANK REYNOLDS, R.L PRECEDENCE AT BATTERSEA. Garn ! The Treasurer goes in before the bloomin’ Seckertary !" \This was the artist's tirst contribution to “ riinch.” It was fublished June 6, igo6.] ''Punch" Pictures by Frank Reynolds Voice from upper regions. “ Dearie, if you can’t keep baby quiet, why not give him something to play with ? Batsman (in danger of being caught by small brother). “Drop it, ’Erbert or ome you go! lO Punch " Piet tires by Frank Reynolds Ra.ndolph (regarding a Christmas present ay to the Assembly Rooms), “ I say, can’t we go a bit faster ? ” Grom)ler. “It ain’t no good bustling this ’orse. 'E knows where we’re goin’, and that means Fox-Trot or nothin’ with ’im.” FOR THIS RELIEF . . . AT LAST WE CAN USE THE NEW HOSE WITH A CLEAR CONSCIENCE. 70 ''Punch" Pictures by Frank Reynolds Begtnnet- (by