Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 72).djvu/183

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Miss Helen Wills as an Artist
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a very forceful personality. Although they are obviously drawn by a student they reveal a promising originality of treatment.

"What impresses me particularly, however, is the determined manner in which the young artist has tackled the most difficult portions of the figure. It is evident that they are serious studies, and not made 'just for fun.' I should imagine that the person who drew them, besides having a knowledge of lawn-tennis, is a stickler for accuracy, because in one or two instances there are deliberate attempts to draw exceptionally difficult positions of the hands which a 'shirker' would have studiously avoided."

When the identity of the artist was disclosed Miss Schlegel was intensely interested.

"Well, I think they are awfully good," she remarked. "Now, without revising my remarks, I would like to add that, to my mind, her attempts to draw the hands gripping the racket are very plucky. In art, as in tennis, the good 'shots'—even when they don't quite 'come off'—are worthy of the greatest appreciation."

Mr. John Hassall, R.I., the popular poster-artist, studied the sketches for quite a long time before he ventured an opinion.

Another lively impression depicting "Suzanne" in the act of volleying.

"They are very interesting and, for a student, quite good," he remarked after a while. "It is evident that Miss Wills has made a careful study of the play of the muscles in motion, and also that she has an eye for composition. What interests me most of all, however, is the manner in which she has attempted to convey a sense of motion by drawing a series of curved lines behind each of the figures. Take the sketch of Mlle. Vlasto, for instance. The swish of the racket, the swing of the arms, and the swirl of the skirt are definitely suggested by those lines. Remove them and the figure would lose much of its vigour. The method is somewhat primitive—I imagine that a child, or a Red Indian, might strive to depict motion by similar means—but it is certainly effective. All the same, a serious student should understand that sound and motion cannot be drawn. This adding of extraneous lines is only a 'trick'—a pictorial illusion. It is artful—but it is not art.

"However, the sketches are very promising, and if Miss Wills were a pupil of mine I should advise her to 'stick to it.'"

Mr. Percy V. Bradshaw, the Principal of the Press Art School, appeared not in the least surprised to learn that the American