ilifornia 
 
 ional 
 
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 9^
 
 COLLECTION 
 
 BGDFL PLATE 
 D ESIGNS 
 
 "BY 
 
 LOUIS 
 RHEAD 
 
 W- PORTER 
 TRUESDELL 
 PUBLISHER.
 
 2021488
 
 ELDOM is it that knights of 
 the brush whose work is of a 
 like high quality are as prolific 
 and wide in range of talent as 
 Louis Rhead, who paints in oils 
 and water colors, draws and 
 etches. He is also an expert on bookbinding, 
 and at the time when posters w r ere in vogue was 
 known as one of the foremost designers, having 
 won a number of medals in competitions and ex- 
 hibitions, and has several hundred designs to 
 his credit. 
 
 Mr. Rhead came to this country in 1883, and 
 at once became very active in his art, painting 
 pictures which have been exhibited in the prin- 
 cipal cities of this country, in the Paris Salon, 
 and Royal Academy of London. 
 
 Mr. Rhead was born in an artistic atmos- 
 phere, Etruria, Staffordshire, in which town the 
 celebrated potteries of Josiah Wedgewood &
 
 Sons were made. The members of his imme- 
 diate family are all artists; his elder brother is a 
 member of the London Society of Painter-Etch- 
 ers, and was the friend of Rossetti, George 
 Frederick Watts, Madox Brown and other ar- 
 tists of note, of whose work he has executed 
 many large plates. Mr. Rhead's father and 
 mother, two sisters and two brothers have also 
 made reputations in the art world. 
 
 Mr. Rhead seriously began to study art at the 
 age of thirteen, under the French painter 
 Boullemier. He learned to draw the human 
 figure remarkably well, and won a national 
 scholarship, which enabled him to study at 
 South Kensington. Four years later he was 
 well launched on his artistic career, and was 
 earning a comfortable income. He was still an 
 industrious student, however, and improved his 
 art by work under Legros Dalou, the sculptor, 
 and Sir Edward Poynter, President of the Royal 
 Academy. 
 
 After devoting himself for a time to making 
 sketches and paintings of rural England, Mr. 
 Rhead was engaged by the publishing house of 
 Appleton, New York, and, at the age of twen-
 
 ty-four, came to this country, where he has 
 since remained, except during the intervals of 
 several trips to London and Paris. 
 
 The artistic publications of the Grolier Club, 
 of which Mr. Rhead has been a member since 
 1887, owe much to his fine skill in bookbind- 
 ing and cover designing. Among the best and 
 most representative examples of his designs are 
 the inside and outside covers of a new edition 
 of "Knickerbocker's History of New York," 
 by Irving. Mr. Rhead recently illustrated and 
 decorated a number of books of classic litera- 
 ture, among them "The Pilgrim's Progress*' 
 and "Mr. Badman," by Bunyan, "Idyls of the 
 King," "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Psalms of 
 David." 
 
 He regards his illustrations in black and 
 white of Bunyan's works, and particularly of 
 "Mr. Badman," as his highest achievements 
 thus far. These drawings, which were done 
 in collaboration with his brothers, George and 
 Frederick, are so strong and virile that they 
 have given new interest and fresh life to Bun- 
 yan's classics, which were beginning to come 
 into the category of books often referred to but
 
 rarely read. Louis Rhead made the larger part 
 of the drawings. They are in the style of the 
 old German engravings and seem to precisely 
 reflect the essence of Bunyan's powerful and 
 gloomy imagination, and also the quaint and 
 picturesque England of the roundhead writer's 
 time. The grotesque and fearsome allegorical 
 figures, the giants and the dragons have, in 
 many of the pictures, typically English back- 
 grounds. This combination results in a very 
 effective representation of Bunyan's genius. 
 
 In his book-plate designs Mr. Rhead has 
 been equally successful; and seems to have 
 brought to this branch of art all the originali- 
 ty, decorativeness and perfection of his larger 
 and more pretentious work. His tendency to- 
 ward the decorative received an added impetus 
 from his appreciation of the masterly designs of 
 Eugene Grasset, whom he regards as the great- 
 est living master of decorative design. As a 
 rule, the designing of book-plates seems to have 
 been given over to the so-called decorative de- 
 signers, who, while excellent in their particular 
 field would not come under the same head as 
 those who, like Mr. Rhead, devote the most of
 
 their time to painting in the illustrative vein, 
 so it is of moment when artists like Mr. Rhead 
 have turned their attention to the book-plate, 
 and given us some beautiful examples which 
 reflect the breadth and maturity of the practised 
 artist. A number of the plates herewith show 
 the force of this in their general sketchiness as 
 in the Swan design: for beautiful decorative de- 
 signs, the Peacock and Pool plates; for studies of 
 the human figure all the plates and particularly 
 the two architectural designs and the Turnure, 
 Barhydt and Katharine Rhead plates. Always 
 an ardent sportsman, Mr. Rhead has latterly de- 
 voted himself to out of door subjects, and his 
 books on Lake and Brook Trout, Fresh and 
 Salt Water Bass are among the most admired 
 of the nature books. Mr. Rhead's fishing plate 
 is shown herewith also the handsome plate of 
 the Ivy Club of Princeton University.
 
 KATHARINE/RHEAtf
 
 EVonx 
 the book& of
 
 KATHARINE^RHEAD
 
 MAJORIBUSM PERPETUQ QUAESITHS
 
 LIBRJS 
 FRANK cJ-POOL
 
 ex-HBRie
 
 HEX LIBRIS OEF 
 
 SdUSIGIAN
 
 W-H-SHIRrCLIFF 
 
 8-WASHINGTON-97
 

 
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