University of Virginia Library

OF STREET ART.

The artists who work for the street-sellers are
less numerous than the poets for the same trade.
Indeed, there is now but one man who can be
said to be solely a street-artist. The inopportune
illustration of ballads of which specimens have
already been given — or of any of the street
papers — are the work of cheap wood-engravers,
who give the execution of these orders to their
boys. But it is not often that illustrations are
prepared expressly for anything but what I
have described as "Gallows literature." Of
these, samples have also been furnished. The
one of a real murder, and the other of a fabulous
one, or "cock," together with a sample (in the
case of Mr. Patrick Connor) of the portraits
given in such productions. The cuts for the
heading of ballads are very often such as have
been used for the illustration of other works.
and are "picked up cheap."

The artist who works especially for the street
trade — as in the case of the man who paints the
patterers' boards — must address his art plainly
to the eye of the spectator. He must use the
most striking colours, be profuse in the appli-
cation of scarlet, light blue, orange — not yellow
I was told, it ain't a good candlelight colour —
and must leave nothing to the imagination.
Perspective and back-grounds are things of but
minor consideration. Everything must be sacri-
ficed for effect.

These paintings are in water colours, and are
rubbed over with a solution of some gum-resin
to protect them from the influence of rainy
weather. Two of the subjects most in demand of
late for the patterers' boards were "the Sloanes"
and "the Mannings." The treatment of Jane
Wilbred was "worked" by twenty boardmen,
each with his "illustration" of the subject. The
illustrations were in six "compartments." In
the first Mr. and Mrs. Sloane are "picking
out" the girl from a line of workhouse chil-
dren. She is represented as plump and healthy,
but with a stupid expression of countenance.
In another compartment, Sloane is beating the
girl, then attenuated and wretched-looking, with
a shoe, while his wife and Miss Devaux (a
name I generally heard pronounced among the
street-people as it is spelt to an English reader)
look approvingly on. The next picture was
Sloane compelling the girl to swallow filth.
The fourth represented her as in the hospital,
with her ribs protruding from her wasted body
— "just as I've worked Sarah Simpole," said a
patterer, "who was confined in a cellar and fed
on 'tato peels. Sarah was a cock, sir, and a
ripper." Then came the attack of the people
on Sloane, one old woman dressed after the
fashion of Mrs. Gamp, "prodding" him with
a huge and very green umbrella. The sixth
and last was, as usual, the trial.

I have described the "Sloanes' board" first,
as it may be more fresh in the remembrance of
any reader observant of such things. In the
"Mannings' board" there were the same num-
ber of compartments as in the Sloanes'; show-
ing the circumstances of the murder, the dis-
covery of the body of Connor, the trial, &c.
One standing patterer, who worked a Mannings'
board, told me that the picture of Mrs. Manning,
beautifully "dressed for dinner" in black satin,
with "a low front," firing a pistol at Connor,
who was "washing himself," while Manning, in
his shirt sleeves, looked on in evident alarm,
was greatly admired, especially out of town.
"The people said," observed the patterer, " ` O,
look at him a-washing hisself; he's a doing it so
nattral, and ain't a-thinking he's a-going to be
murdered. But was he really so ugly as that?
Lor! such a beautiful woman to have to do with

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him.' You see, sir, Connor weren't flattered
and perhaps Mrs. Manning was. I have heard
the same sort of remarks both in town and
country. I patters hard on the women such
times, as I points them out on my board in mur-
ders or any crimes. I says: `When there's
mischief a woman's always the first. Look at
Mrs. Manning there on that werry board — the
work of one of the first artists in London — it's
a faithful likeness, taken from life at one of her
examinations, look at her. She fires the pistol,
as you can see, and her husband was her tool.'
I said, too, that Sloane was Mrs. Sloane's tool.
It answers best, sir, in my opinion, going on that
patter. The men likes it, and the women doesn't
object, for they'll say: `Well, when a woman
is bad, she is bad, and is a disgrace to her sex.'
There's the board before them when I runs on
that line of patter, and when I appeals to the
'lustration, it seems to cooper the thing. They
must believe their eyes."

When there is "a run" on any particular
subject, there are occasionally jarrings — I was
informed by a "boardman" — between the artist
and his street-customers. The standing patterers
want "something more original" than their fel-
lows, especially if they are likely to work in the
same locality, while the artist prefers a faith-
ful copy of what he has already executed. The
artist, moreover, and with all reasonableness,
will say: "Why, you must have the facts. Do
you want me to make Eliza Chestney killing
Rush?" The matter is often compromised by
some change being introduced, and by the cha-
racters being differently dressed. One man told
me, that in town and country he had seen Mrs.
Jermy shot in the following costumes, "in light
green welwet, sky-blue satin, crimson silk, and
vite muslin." It was the same with Mrs.
Manning.

For the last six or eight years, I am told, the
artist in question has prepared all the boards in
demand. Previously, the standing patterers pre-
pared their own boards, when they fancied them-
selves capable of such a "reach of art," or had
them done by some unemployed painter, whom
they might fall in with at a lodging-house, or
elsewhere. This is rarely done now, I am told;
not perhaps more than six times in a twelve-
month, and when done it is most frequently
practised of "cock-boards;" for, as was said to
me, "if a man thinks he's getting up a fake-
ment likely to take, and wants a board to help
him on with it, he'll try and keep it to hisself,
and come out with it quite fresh."

The charge of the popular street-artist for the
painting of a board is 3s. or 3s. 6d., according
to the simplicity or elaborateness of the details;
the board itself is provided by the artist's em-
ployer. The demand for this peculiar branch
of street art is very irregular, depending entirely
upon whether anything be "up" or not; that
is, whether there has or has not been perpetrated
any act of atrocity, which has riveted, as it is
called, the public attention. And so great is the
uncertainty felt by the street-folk, whether "the
most beautiful murder will take or not," that it
is rarely the patterer will order, or the artist
will speculate, in anticipation of a demand, upon
preparing the painting of any event, until satis-
fied that it has become "popular." A deed of
more than usual daring, deceit, or mystery, may
be at once hailed by those connected with mur-
der-patter, as "one that will do," and some
speculation may be ventured upon; as it was,
I am informed, in the cases of Tawell, Rush,
and the Mannings; but these are merely excep-
tional. Thus, if the artist have a dozen boards
ordered "for this ten days, he may have two,
or one, or none for the next ten;" so uncertain,
it appears, is all that depends, without intrinsic
merit, on mere popular applause.

I am unable to give — owing to the want of
account-books, &c., which I have so often had
to refer to as characteristic of street-people —
a precise account of the average number of
boards thus prepared in a year. Perhaps it may
be as close to the fact as possible to conclude
that the artist in question, who, unlike the
majority of the street-poets, is not a street-seller,
but works, as a professional man, for but not in the streets, realises on his boards a profit of
7s. 6d. weekly. The pictorial productions for
street-shows will be more appropriately described
in the account of street-performers and showmen.

This artist, as I have shown concerning some
of the street-professors of the sister art of poesy,
has the quality of knowing how to adapt his
works exactly to the taste of his patrons the
sellers, and of their patrons, the buyers in the
streets.