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 MODERN MASTER 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/drawingsofjohnmsOObaldrich 
 
FRONTISPIECE 
 
 AFRICAN ELEPHANT 
 
1.2? <^ 
 
 DR/M^INGS OF 
 
 JOHN M. SWAN RA 
 
 LONDON .GEORGE NEWNES LIMITED 
 SOUTHAMPTON STREET. STRANDw.c 
 NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS 
 

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 AFRICAN ELEPHANT 
 
 HYDERABAD TIGRESS WALKING 
 
 LION AND LIONESS . 
 
 TIGRESS .... 
 
 JAGUARS EATING . 
 
 BEAR ON FLOE 
 
 HEAD OF AFRICAN LION 
 
 LIONESS DEFENDING HER CUBS . 
 
 COMPOSITION FOR " GLADIATORS " OR 
 
 VIVARIUM" .... 
 HEAD OF AFRICAN LION IN PROFILE 
 JAGUAR WALKING . 
 MALE JAGUAR . 
 HEAD OF A LIONESS 
 JAGUAR .... 
 LIONESS WALKING . 
 GROUP OF LEOPARDS . 
 STUDY FOR COMPOSITION "DELUGE" 
 TIGER OF COCHIN CHINA ASLEEP 
 INDIAN LEOPARDS IN REPOSE 
 
 PUMA 
 
 LIONESS EATING .... 
 LIONESS WALKING— A STUDY AT THE 
 GROUP OF INDIAN LEOPARDS 
 HEAD OF MALE POLAR BEAR 
 TIGRESS DRINKING . 
 >f TIGER SEATED .... 
 LIONESS WALKING— FRONT VIEW 
 
 "BESTIARII IN 
 
 ZOO 
 
 PLATE 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
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 lO 
 
 II 
 
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 M121320 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— con<mwe(f 
 
 GROUP OF TIGERS 
 
 POLAR BEAR WALKING— AMSTERDAM 
 
 A GROUP OF LIONS 
 
 CEYLON LEOPARDS EATING .... 
 AFRICAN LION IN REPOSE .... 
 FOUR STUDIES OF TIGERS' HEADS 
 
 LION DISTURBED 
 
 CEYLON LEOPARDESS EATING 
 
 STUDY OF LEOPARDESS IN REPOSE . 
 
 POLAR BEAR ON FLOE 
 
 STUDY OF FEMALE FIGURE FOR "FATA MORGANA" 
 MALE PUMA ON TREE-TRUNK . 
 
 PUMA ROLLING 
 
 AFRICAN LION WALKING .... 
 
 PUMAS . 
 
 STUDY OF ADULT LION WALKING 
 HEAD OF YOUNG LION OF GHUZERAT 
 STUDY OF FIGURES FOR "THE EXPULSION" 
 
 TIGER EATING 
 
 POLAR BEAR WATCHING SEAL HOLES 
 THREE STUDIES FOR "FATA MORGANA" . 
 POLAR BEAR "SAMSON," ZOO, 1904 
 
 HYDERABAD TIGER 
 
 PUMA ON A TREE 
 
 PLATE 
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 VI 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF 
 J. M. SWAN, R.A. 
 BY A. L. BALDRY 
 
 HERE is perhaps a little difficulty in defining the place 
 which Mr. J. M. Swan occupies among the artists of 
 our times. He excels in so many forms of art, and he 
 turns from one to the other so readily and so often that 
 it is impossible to label him with the exactness which 
 would satisfy ordinary people who regard versatility as 
 a disconcerting defect. A very large section of the public seems to 
 consider the adoption of a set pattern by the art-worker as an essential 
 condition to which he must conform before he can expect to be recog- 
 nised as one of the leaders of his profession. If he changes his 
 methods and varies his production he throws upon the popular intelli- 
 gence a strain that is too exhausting to be endured, and he makes 
 demands upon the attention of the lover of tradition that are too 
 exacting to be quite permissible. In fact, he outrages one of the most 
 solemnly accepted of all artistic conventions, that the man who has 
 once made a success by a particular type of performance must adhere to 
 this same type without perceptible variation to the end of his career. 
 
 To quote instances of artists who have arrived at the widest 
 popularity by this simple device is certainly unnecessary, they can be 
 supplied easily enough by every student of modern art history whose 
 experience extends over a few years. The interesting point about Mr. 
 Swan's position is that he has attained it, not merely by avoiding the 
 broad road which so many of his fellows have been content to tread, but 
 actually by straying in any and every direction where his fancy has led 
 him. He has confined himself within none of the recognised bounds ; 
 he is a painter and sculptor ; he works with equal facility in oils, 
 water-colours, and pastel ; he paints figure subjects, portraits, and 
 animals; and in sculpture he treats the human form and animal life 
 with impartial power. He has kept an open mind and has never 
 dulled his observation by cultivating narrow preferences or by dwelling 
 too closely upon the trivialities of his profession. 
 
 Yet he has not paid what is usually the penalty of independence 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 
 He lias not been ignored because he has refused to work as others do, 
 and from this fact can be judged how real is his mastery and how 
 dominating is his artistic personality. The general public has accepted 
 him as one of the leaders of the British school, and by art lovers of the 
 better sort at home and abroad he is hailed as an artist rarely accom- 
 plished and possessed of exceptional understanding of his responsibilities. 
 He has a host of admirers who are quite ready to follow him in his 
 excursions over the wide field of art practice. His influence is a 
 healthy one, for its tendency is to widen the popular outlook and to 
 prove that narrow specialising is not the only, or even the best, way of 
 obtaining recognition. Mr. Swan, indeed, can be taken as a standing 
 example of the possibility of securing it in full measure by an exactly 
 opposite course of procedure, by the cultivation of a catholic taste and 
 by the acquisition of an executive equipment which would serve him 
 equally well in all the phases of his activity. 
 
 It can be admitted, however, that there is one particular direction 
 in which he has established himself as pre-eminent not only among 
 modern artists but also among those whose names are preserved in the 
 record of the world's achievement. He has made a very exact study 
 of animals, and has exhaustively investigated their pictorial possibilities 
 and their adaptability to the sculptor's purposes. The results of these 
 investigations he has set forth in a splendid series of works in various 
 materials, in pictures, drawings, statues and statuettes; and in the 
 execution of these works he has brought into operation all his resources 
 of thought and craftsmanship. The note that he has struck is in many 
 respects new ; he does not harp on the convention which has satisfied 
 so many other painters who have occupied themselves with kindred 
 studies, but chooses and follows a line that is almost entirely his own. 
 
 To have found a new way in a form of art which has already 
 engaged the attention of such numbers of able craftsmen is an achieve- 
 ment for which he deserves the fullest credit. As animal painting has 
 flourished through so many generations, and has indisputably been 
 very popular with both artists and the public, he might not unreason- 
 ably have been content to deal with it in the manner sanctioned by 
 custom and by the practice of his predecessors. But wisely he has 
 preferred to see for himself what are its more or less untouched possi- 
 bilities, and to develop them in a judicious spirit of indiff^erence to 
 tradition. With the rarest powers of observation to help him, and 
 with his highly cultivated originality, he has reverted to minute 
 examination of Nature at first hand, and has taken up the study of his 
 subject at a period antecedent to its becoming involved in a cloud of 
 conventions and formulated methods. 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 
 The value of the example he is setting is all the greater because 
 this tendency to obscure with formulse a type of art which depends for 
 its real success upon its truth and accuracy of interpretation has had 
 results which are visibly pernicious. Under the influences by which it 
 has been affected the pictorial representation of animals has become 
 artificial and unintelligent, and has lost the significance which is one of 
 the most vital essentials in all seriously artistic effort. Animals are 
 introduced into pictures as accessories in some sentimental story, as 
 incidental objects of interest, and are treated as the minor characters in 
 dramas with which they may or may not be legitimately connected. 
 In art of this sort they are made to play parts which are, as a rule, 
 not natural to them, and they are degraded by the painters to the level 
 of the performing beasts which provide such saddening spectacles in the 
 circus or music hall. The dog, for instance, as the friend of man, is 
 given more than his fair share of the follies of his master; he poses 
 and attitudinises, he smirks self-consciously, or he assumes an air of 
 exaggerated sentiment that sits on him uncomfortably and that is 
 absolutely foreign to his nature. In all this art the crack of the 
 trainer's whip is too plainly heard, and the results are more ridiculous 
 than persuasive. 
 
 Things are, perhaps, even worse when a painter turns from trained 
 dogs, sentimental horses, or photographic cattle, to the great wild 
 beasts which have not been offered the indignity of domestication. 
 He will not or cannot understand that these splendid savages have 
 characters of their own, and that they steadfastly refuse to ape the tricks 
 and graces of humanity. So he strives to make them, as he conceives 
 it, interesting to the people who go to menageries and enjoy the excite- 
 ment of stirring up caged lions with a stick. He flatters these lovers 
 of wild life by presenting to them an animal that they can understand, 
 either cowed and tamed by solitary confinement or furiously rampant 
 in some moment of despairing protest against the indignity of its 
 position. Worst of all he chooses, on occasions, to suggest that the 
 dwellers in the jungle are subject to human emotions, and he depicts 
 them with expressions that they are absolutely incapable of assuming. 
 The lion in love, wearing the sheepish smile of a courting rustic, is 
 a painfully familiar spectacle, and its familiarity has bred a well- 
 deserved contempt among thinking people for art which can be 
 so futile and so misconceived. 
 
 Where the blame lies for the existence ot these conventions, 
 whether it should be put upon the public which enjoys these travesties 
 or upon the artists who produce them, need hardly be discussed ; 
 probably it can be equally divided between the producers and con- 
 
 3 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 
 sumers of art work. People who have never studied the realities of 
 animal life have failed to perceive how untrue such pictures of 
 semi-human beasts really are ; and most of the painters, finding that 
 they could gain acceptance without attempting more than this very 
 large section of the public was prepared to admire, have not troubled to 
 properly master their subject. But anyhow the result of these lapses of 
 taste and conscientiousness has been decidedly demoralising; it empha- 
 sises in the clearest way the need for a new influence, and proves 
 plainly how much there is to gain by the introduction of healthier 
 ideas and saner methods into a phase of artistic expression which has 
 been allowed to become stereotyped. 
 
 No better man than Mr. Swan could have been found to head a 
 rebellion against a harmful tradition, no one more thoroughly qualified 
 by dominance of character and shrewd insight into aesthetic problems. 
 Moreover he has had the advantage of a very thorough training which 
 has enabled him to overcome completely all executive difficulties and to 
 realise his intentions in an unhesitating and significant fashion. This 
 training was more serious and prolonged than usual ; it was directed 
 throughout by a deliberate desire on his part to master the details 
 which are of vital importance to the artist who is aiming at the highest 
 kind of achievement, and its duration was determined by his resolve to 
 come into the professional arena only when he was amply equipped for 
 arduous undertakings. He wished, it would seem, to postpone his 
 public appearance until his wings were fully fledged and well able to 
 support him in his most ambitious flights, until he could command 
 success by the indisputable quality of his work. There was in his case 
 none of that experimental practice by which most artists gradually build 
 up a popular reputation as they pass slowly and visibly through the 
 successive stages of their immaturity ; he began with his powers per- 
 fectly developed and with the tentative period of his career already 
 behind him. He has ripened since ; his art has become more impres- 
 sive in its masterly confidence ; but it has changed not at all in its 
 purpose or its meaning. 
 
 Mr. Swan was born in 1 847, and it was not until more than thirty 
 years later that he made his first appearance at the Academy with a 
 picture of Dante and the Leopard. In the interval he had gone 
 through a great variety of educational experiences. He began his 
 systematic study at the Worcester School of Art, and thence he passed 
 in succession to the Lambeth School and the Schools of the Royal 
 Academy. Like many other artists of English birth, he discovered that 
 the teaching at this last institution was not sufficient for his purposes at 
 that time, so in 1874 he migrated to Paris in search of ampler know- 
 
 4 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 ledge and more helpful guidance than he could obtain at home. The 
 master under whom he decided to work was J. L. Gt^rome, whose 
 academic precision was exactly what such a sincere student would most 
 appreciate ; and in the studio of this famous teacher he found the 
 atmosphere of serious striving after complete achievement which he 
 specially desired for the development of his own capacities. 
 
 With a characteristic resolve to make the most of what he recog- 
 nised as his best opportunities he spent a much longer time in Paris 
 than English students usually care to devote to the finishing stage of 
 their education. Although Mr. Swan was in 1874 so far advanced 
 that he was admitted to the life classes at the Beaux Arts immediately 
 after his arrival, he remained at work there for some years, gathering 
 knowledge not only from his teachers but also from fellow-students 
 like Dagnan-Bouveret and Bastien Le Page, with whom he was 
 brought into intimate association. He extended, too, the scope of his 
 study, for, on the advice of G^rome, who interested himself keenly in 
 his progress, he began to occupy himself seriously with modelling, a 
 branch of artistic expression for which he showed a special aptitude. 
 The master he chose to guide him in this fresh subject was Frdmiet, 
 the sculptor whose splendid representations of animal life are ranked 
 now among the masterpieces of the French school. By the teaching of 
 Frdmiet, and by close and prolonged examination of the works of 
 Barye, another artist of masterly originality, Mr. Swan was soon 
 enabled to command as much attention by his sculpture as he had 
 already earned by his notable efforts in painting and draughtsmanship. 
 
 As an immediate result of his study of modelling he was induced, 
 partly by his own inclination and partly by the suggestions of Fremiet, 
 to enter upon a course of anatomical investigations. These he carried 
 on with an amount of care and precision that would have done credit to 
 a man who proposed to make surgery rather than art his profession for 
 the future. He went as a pupil to the best authorities on the subject, to 
 anatomists like Gervais and Duval, and worked long and assiduously in 
 various dissecting-rooms. To give his art a firm and stable foundation 
 he sought scientifically for exact and practical information about the 
 details of anatomical structure and about the character of the construc- 
 tion by which the surface forms in the bodies of human beings and 
 animals are determined. Against the danger of allowing exact science 
 to dull his responsiveness to visual impressions he guarded by frequent 
 artistic exercises, by recording pictorially or in the round the results of 
 his dissecting-room researches, and by applying in accordance with a 
 well-considered system the formal knowledge which he was gathering 
 from surgical experts and anatomists. 
 
 5 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 
 When at last his stay in Paris came to an end and he returned to 
 London to work out his artistic destiny, he was in no hurry to pose 
 as a man to whom all the secrets of his craft had been revealed. 
 Indeed, he has never been guilty of assuming any such attitude ; a 
 student he has remained to the present day, and an earnest seeker after 
 completeness, though at the same time he has not hesitated to set 
 himself tasks which made the greatest demands upon his powers. For 
 some while he continued his researches in anatomy, and he also became 
 a regular frequenter of the Zoological Gardens, where he had oppor- 
 tunities that he knew well how to turn to account of perfecting his 
 knowledge of animals. Though at first he produced comparatively 
 few exhibition pictures, he sent to the Academy from 1878 onwards 
 canvases in which he summed up convincingly the results of his many 
 years of exhaustive study, and in which he asserted what was generally 
 recognised as an exceptional right to attention. 
 
 Yet he waited some years before he received those official honours 
 to which artists of unusual ability are held to be entitled. The first 
 of these distinctions came from abroad, in 1885, when he was elected a 
 member of the Dutch Water Colour Society — he was, indeed, famous 
 in Holland long before he was regarded in England as anything more 
 than a man of possible, but by no means certain, eminence — but public 
 acknowledgment at home of his special claims was deferred until i 889, 
 in which year his picture ne Prodigal Son made something of a 
 sensation at the Academy and was purchased by the Chantrey Fund 
 Trustees. Five years later came his election as an Associate of the 
 Academy, and in the spring of 1905 his promotion to the rank 
 of Academician. In 1896 he was made an Associate of the Royal 
 Society of Painters in Water Colours and a full member in 1899. 
 During the period of a little over five and twenty years, to which his 
 activity as an exhibiting artist has been confined, he has shown nothing 
 that has been in the smallest degree unworthy of an artist with his 
 high ideals, nothing that has not been carefully considered and brought 
 into conformity with the demands of a fastidious taste. He has 
 always been the severest critic of his own achievements, and has never 
 abated his desire to satisfy himself under any misapprehension of the 
 value of the popular acclamation with which his works have latterly 
 been received. 
 
 So well, indeed, has he maintained his standard that it would 
 not be possible to make any exceptions from the list of performances 
 which have appropriately represented him in the various exhibitions. 
 Canvases like the Prodigal Son, Orpheus^ The Syren Ship^ and The 
 Young Bathers^ can be quoted as illustrations of his fanciful invention ; 
 6 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 others like his 'Tigers Drinking^ Polar Bears Swimmings and the 
 magnificent Ceylon Leopards now in the National Gallery of New 
 South Wales, as examples of his insight into animal character and of 
 his power of realising accurate observations; and statues like his Boy 
 and Bear Cuhs^ and the Puma and Macaw^ as instances of his 
 admirable application of the technicalities of sculpture to the expres- 
 sion of his artistic creed; but these are not to be taken as abnormal 
 successes which overshadow all the rest of his practice ; they rank 
 rather as types by which the whole of his work can be judged. Even 
 the most casual observer can see that the common vice of working for 
 the market has never affected him ; he gives to the world only his best, 
 only what he believes to be wholly explanatory of his intentions and 
 thoroughly logical in its assertion of what he holds to be vital matters. 
 
 In this, it is true, he does not stand alone ; there have been, and 
 there still are, conscientious artists who are willing to make sacrifices, 
 if necessary, for conscience sake. But the kind of aesthetic devotion 
 which will risk everything for a principle is always rare, and the 
 conscience which is proof against the temptations of popularity is rarer 
 still. The man who has made his reputation has not the same stimulus 
 as the one who is still struggling for recognition, and, consciously or 
 unconsciously, is apt to relax his eflFort because triumphs come to him 
 easily. Therefore, in Mr. Swan's case, some comment is permissible — 
 for the sake of example — on the fact that the wide acknowledgment 
 of his right to be considered one of the chief of modern masters has 
 rather spurred him to greater exertions than induced any inclination 
 towards mannerism or any belief in his own infallibility. The student- 
 like enthusiasm has remained the guiding idea of his maturity and has 
 kept vividly alive in his mind the desire for progress. It has saved 
 him from the too common delusion that less pains need be taken to 
 keep a position once secured than are necessary for its attainment ; and 
 it has made impossible any trading on his reputation. He is as 
 completely convinced as he ever was of the vital importance of constant 
 and strenuous labour for his own satisfaction and for his own informa- 
 tion ; and whatever he thinks worthy to represent him in public 
 exhibitions can be accepted without hesitation because he has thought 
 it fit to show. 
 
 Nothing perhaps throws more light upon his working method than 
 the series of his drawings, a series which sums up the observations of a 
 life-time. When an artist is painting a picture purely mechanical 
 exigencies compel him to spend weeks or months upon the canvas, 
 elaborating touch by touch and detail by detail a comprehensive 
 pictorial scheme. No matter how rapid he may be, or how direct and 
 
 7 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 
 unhesitating his manner of handling, some of the first freshness of his 
 inspiration must inevitably be lost in the gradual evolution of the idea 
 that he wishes to convey. That he adds during this process of 
 evolution other things vsrhich compensate for the loss of spontaneity can 
 readily be admitted ; he amplifies the main intention of his picture and 
 strengthens the thread of his story by attaching to it various subsidiary 
 interests, until at last he produces what is as much an intellectual effort 
 as it is an illustration of an aesthetic creed. But the carefully devised 
 and finished picture is necessarily, from the very circumstances by which 
 its production is attended, less forcible in its revelation of the artist's 
 personality than those slighter preliminary works which he has done 
 simply to please himself. If he is sincere, his sketches and studies from 
 Nature are wholly unaffected by any consideration of popular judgment, 
 or by any concession to exhibition conventions, because in carrying 
 them out he has had no intention of allowing them to pass from the 
 privacy of his studio. They are notes of his impressions, reminders 
 lest he should forget certain things with which it is essential that he 
 should keep himself acquainted ; but they concern him only and they 
 may quite possibly be unintelligible to anyone else. 
 
 When they have been carried far enough to give to other people 
 the same suggestion which they convey to the artist, they are often 
 more fascinating to the sincere art-lover than the most ambitious and 
 impressive pictures. Their directness, their simple statement of plain 
 facts, and their freedom from pictorial circumlocutions are qualities 
 which appeal convincingly to everyone who looks rather at the manner 
 of art work than the subject-matter with which it deals — to everyone 
 who has the taste to admire the artist's craftsmanship more than his 
 ingenuity as a teller of stories or as an inventor of dramatic situations. 
 The real sketch, so long as it is something more than a mere shorthand 
 note, is doubly persuasive, because none of its meaning is veiled by 
 artificial graces of execution or by unnecessary technical elaboration. 
 What it has to say is said clearly, abruptly perhaps, but with so much 
 point, that only the dull or demoralised intelligence can fail to grasp 
 what it signifies. If the sketch is the work of a man whose facility of 
 expression is guided by shrewdness of observation it is a thing of the 
 utmost value and worthy to be ranked among his greater achievements. 
 To treat it, as the unthinking do, as a slight thing, a trifle easily 
 thrown off, and therefore to be lightly estimated, is but the manifest- 
 ation of a vulgar prejudice — a concession to the commercial instinct 
 which appraises the worth of a work of art by the number of hours of 
 labour expended upon it by the artist. 
 
 What people who make this common mistake habitually forget is 
 8 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 
 that the fine sketch or the rapid but intimate study is only within 
 the reach of the master. Only a great artist who has solved the most 
 baffling problems which his craft presents can express in a few brief 
 touches the complexity of the subject before him, and the more 
 profound his knowledge the more apparently careless and summary will 
 often be his record ; but if his drawing be examined with proper 
 attention, and with a real desire to understand what was his aim, 
 the extraordinary appropriateness of every mark which he has impressed 
 upon his paper will be perfectly apparent. He has not to fumble and 
 hesitate like the beginner or the man of untrained insight ; he knows 
 exactly where to start and, most important of all, where to stop, but in 
 the short interval between the beginning and the ending of his work he 
 has gathered all that is necessary for the purpose he has in view and he 
 has sifted out all superfluities ; what remains is no more and no less 
 than he knows to be artistically essential. But this perfection of 
 knowledge, this capacity to economise labour, are gifts with which 
 few men are endowed, and they are gifts which by their very rarity 
 are entitled to more respect than they usually receive even from 
 professed lovers of art. 
 
 Decidedly, if there were nothing more than the series of his 
 drawings to fix Mr. Swan's place in the history of artistic achievement, 
 he would still have a right to the highest honours which can fall to 
 any member of his profession. This series, as has been already said, 
 embodies the observations of a life-time, and therefore, as so many 
 years of his life have been given up to peculiarly minute and exhaustive 
 studies, it is more than ordinarily instructive. But with an amazing 
 amount of understanding of the subjects with which he deals he has 
 also acquired in ample measure the certainty of hand and the gift of 
 rapid selection which are among the distinguishing qualifications of 
 the great master, so that his drawings are not only memorable as 
 illustrations of scientific research but they are as well models of easy 
 and consummately skilful accomplishment. Examined one by one 
 they reveal a sustained purpose to arrive at the truths of nature by a 
 system which is compounded of logic and impressionability in excep- 
 tionally correct proportions. His receptive faculty, his power to see 
 instantly and exactly what is most worthy of record, has been trained 
 until it will respond perfectly to nature's promptings — until he can trust 
 it to guide him always in the direction where there is the promise of 
 great results. His logical sense has been refined and educated until he 
 can depend upon it to save him from mistaking a vivid impression for 
 a sane and solid conviction. This balanced temperament controls his 
 hand and keeps the whole of his executive method from straying into 
 
 9 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 
 ineffectiveness or into that exaggeration of manner which is worse than 
 ineffectiveness. He never hesitates in his statement of the facts that he 
 chooses as artistically appropriate, but equally he never goes outside the 
 technical limits which are prescribed by sound tradition and good taste. 
 
 The great majority of these drawings are of animals, a few only of 
 the human figure. As a figure draughtsman he is distinguished by a 
 fine sense of character and by a very accurate judgment of the qualities 
 of line and modelling which make interesting the various types of 
 humanity. He has a preference for the long, slender forms of youth, 
 for the flattened curves and gentle angularities which are found in male 
 and female figures before they have reached their fullest development ; 
 and these forms he treats with admirable discrimination. His know- 
 ledge of anatomy is never displayed unnecessarily, never insisted upon 
 as it is by some painters who seem to have no other object in their 
 work than to advertise the fact that they have gone through a course 
 of education which they do not know how to apply. The figures he 
 draws are those of normal beings, of boys and girls whose natural grace 
 does not need to be over-idealised, and whose picturesque immaturity is 
 attractive enough to be left unspoiled by the addition of elegant 
 artificiality or by being forced to conform to the mannerism of this or 
 that school. In a word he is a realist, but his realism is intelligent and 
 used with proper perception both of its advantages and its dangers. 
 
 He is certainly not less a realist when he turns from human beings 
 to animals, for in this latter branch of his practice he has carried the 
 study of nature to its furthermost limits. But here again his fidelity 
 to fact is altogether without any touch of pedantry ; he does not 
 laboriously insist upon stating minutely every insignificant detail of his 
 subject, but sets down with masterly conciseness no more, and no less, 
 than he wants to make his drawing convincing in its actuality. A 
 few lines often suffice to convey this meaning, and at no time does he 
 attempt more elaboration than the artistic motive legitimately demands ; 
 brevity is possible to him because he knows exactly what he can do 
 with his materials and what it is that he has to visualise with their 
 assistance. Here it is that the value of his years of anatomical and 
 artistic research is most triumphantly demonstrated ; he can fix in an 
 instant on the vital things, and, with his mind made up, can confi- 
 dently record just those realities which have the highest claim to 
 attention. 
 
 It is this capacity that shows so strongly in all his drawings of 
 animals. It enables him to seize at once upon the individuality of 
 the beast he wishes to portray and helps him to suggest vividly its 
 moods and emotions. Every turn of the lithe bodies, every pose and 
 
 lO 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF J. M. SWAN 
 
 attitude signify something which is quite comprehensible to the man 
 who has more than a superficial understanding of animal character; 
 and Mr. Swan, who has gone far below the surface and learned the 
 significance of each seemingly chance movement, can interpret this 
 character in all its varieties. He never makes the mistake of crediting 
 his four-footed sitters with feelings or sentiments by which they could 
 never be affected ; he shows them as they really are, and reads with 
 unhesitating accuracy the signs by which they reveal themselves. 
 With the same accuracy he depicts their complexities of structure, the 
 wonderfully constructed bodies that enable the great beasts of prey to 
 play so successfully the parts assigned to them in the scheme ot 
 creation. His drawings, slight, summary, careless almost, as they often 
 seem to be, are exact enough to be taken as scientific diagrams. The 
 massive forms of the bones, the interlacing of the elastic muscles, the 
 folds and creases of the skin, are all understood and properly accounted 
 for ; no physical characteristic is missed or judged at less than its full 
 value. Yet the science of it all does not draw away attention from the 
 splendid quality of his art. He knows too much to fail in adjusting 
 the various parts which have to be pieced together to produce the final 
 result, and he is too true an artist to turn away from the right path 
 into byways which would lead him to denial of the principles that he 
 has professed and practised throughout his memorable career. 
 
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PLATE XII 
 
 HEAD OF A LIONESS 
 
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PLATE XXXVII 
 
 STUDY OF FEMALE FIGURE FOR "FATA MORGANA 
 
PLATE XXXVIII 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
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 MALE PUMA ON TREE-TRUNK 
 
X 
 
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PLATE XL 
 
 AFRICAN LION WALKING 
 
PLATE XLI 
 
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 /•/^•::^'-^x-: 
 
 PUMAS 
 
PLATE XLIl 
 
 STUDY OF ADULT LION WALKING 
 
PLATE XLIII 
 
 HEAD OF YOUNG LION OF GHUZERAT 
 
PLATE XLIV 
 
 STUDY OF FIGURES FOR "THE EXPULSION 
 
PLATE XLV 
 
 TIGER EATING 
 
 PLATE XLVI 
 
 POLAR BEAR WATCHING SEAL HOLES 
 
PLATE XLVII 
 
 THREE STUDIES OF NUDE FOR "FATA MORGANA 
 
PLATE XLVIII 
 
 POLAR BEAR "SAMSON," ZOO, 1904 
 
 PLATE XLIX 
 
 HYDERABAD TIGER 
 
PLATE L 
 
 PUMA ON A TREE 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE T.c. 
 
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