Picture and Text

This was the title for Henry James' 1893 collection of essays on art and artists. It seemed a good heading for a sample of the drawings that various artists added to James' writings. HJ usually looked unfavorably on illustration of his work, and some of these samples may demonstrate why. But the drawings are still interesting for historical and, sometimes, artistic reasons.



Rather stilted illustration of James' early tale, The Story of a Masterpiece. Gaston Fay contributed this competent but somewhat lifeless illustration to the January, 1868 edition of The Galaxy, a magazine that James often used for his lesser efforts. As you can probably guess, the story revolves around a portrait and what it reveals about the sitter. There are intriguing similarities to the much later and more mature parable, The Liar.



Dark, streaky illustration of HJ's virtually unknown 1868 story, A Problem. There are good reasons for the oblivion which has overtaken this melodramatic, almost ridiculous tale. W.J. Hennessy doesn't appear to have wasted too much time on this illustration in the June, 1868 edition of The Galaxy - and James certainly didn't put too much effort into the story itself.



James wrote a rather disapproving essay called The London Theaters for the January, 1881 issue of Harper's Monthly. HJ thought the English stage was in a bad way, but that didn't stop him from trying his own hand at playwriting. Jamesians know what became of that effort. R.C. Woodville contributed several illustrations to the article. This one shows William and Madge Kendal in a histrionic moment during Tennyson's play, The Falcon.



James' essay on Venice in the November, 1882 edition of Century Magazine has justly become one of the classic accounts of the museum-piece city. The magazine spared no expense and lavishly illustrated the essay with top-flight line drawings by superb craftsmen. This typically detailed and masterly example is worthy of its subject, the Rialto.



C.S. Reinhart brought Louisa Pallant and her calculating daughter to memorable life in this clever drawing for the February, 1888 edition of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. Maybe the pair is glowering a bit too obviously, but - as the story reminds us - never say you know the last word about any human heart.



Another sharply observed effort from C.S. Reinhart. This time he's illustrating James' story Two Countries (later renamed The Modern Warning) for the June, 1888 edition of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. Always a fine portraitist, Reinhart would receive kind words from James in an 1890 Harper's Weekly article.



Joseph Pennell would illustrate many of James' travel writings, including his books, English Hours and A Little Tour in France. Here he contributes a marvelous panorama of Charing Cross Station to James' essay, London, published in the December, 1888 issue of Century Magazine.



James was always a sucker for the charms of Italy - and particularly the canal-city by the Adriatic. Alexander Zezzos contributed this beguiling glimpse of a maiden perched over the Grand Canal to James' essay on the storied waterway in the November, 1892 issue of Scribner's Magazine.


To get back to any page on this web heap, try these links. BTW (Net talk for "by the way"), only the main page, "Back to my front page," and the Henry James page, "The writer I like to read" have links to this page.


Back to my front page

What I do for a living

Meet my wife the soprano

What I like and dislike about cyberspace

The one and only dog in our house

The writer I like to read

The lone star

A pair of cinematic aces

Real old-time religion

Liverpool laddies

The old hometown

A big set of long books

In memoriam

Isn't mathematics a barrel of laughs?

Hobbies and interests and other things I do when I goof off