From The Standard: “Recent Art Books: The Pageant.” Rev. of The Pageant, vol. 1

“The Pageant.” Henry and Co.—This beautiful little gift-book, of which Mr. Gleeson White is the literary, and Mr. C. H. Shannon the artistic, editor, is practically a return to the fashion of the “annuals” which charmed our grandfathers and grandmothers some sixty years ago. Now, as then, picture alternates with literature, and well-known writers and draughtsmen or painters are summoned to give us of their best. The production, when all is said, is eminently modern, and it is not quite miscellaneous—that is, not so miscellaneous and so heterogeneous as any given number of an ordinary magazine. The suffrages it seeks to gain are those of cultivated people, the merely “popular” writer or painter being conspicuous by his absence. In the department of pictorial Art there is an original lithograph by Mr. Whistler, of a thoughtful gentleman seated, entitled “The Doctor.” There is also a reproduction of an early and delightful painting by the same artist: it is “The Symphony in White, No. 3.” Mr. G. F. Watts is represented by his superb and noble “Ariadne,” and by a “Paolo and Francesca” more suggestive of Dante than any representation of the subject that we know. There is more than one telling and graceful design by Sir Edward Burne Jones: There is a good reproduction of the “Monna Rosa” of Rossetti; and, to speak of less famous men, Mr. C. H. Shannon has a finely imaginative “Romantic Landscape”: and a young man, Mr. Charles Conder—a colourist here deprived of actual colour—contributes a delicate caprice suggestive of the Eighteenth Century in France, “L’Oiseau Bleu.” Mr. Selwyn Image’s design for the title-page takes its place also as good art. The literature of “The Pageant” is at least as varied as its pictorial design. With one or two exceptions, such as the translation of Maeterlinck’s most impressive “Mort de Tintagiles,” and Professor York Powell’s vigorous essay on Wilhelm Meinhold, the shorter contributions are in reality more substantial and of more lasting value than the longer ones. Mr. Gleeson White’s is his excellent criticism on a contemporary draughtsman. The note of patriotism is sounded finely by Mr. Theodore Watts in “David Gwyn”; Mr. Swinburne sends “A Roundel of Rabelais” that is full of music; under the title of “Grouped Studies,” a series of thoughts and impressions of real scenery and imaginary people is contributed by Mr. Frederick Wedmore; while from Mr. Robert Bridges there comes a poem on the South Wind, the work, obviously, of a master of accomplished verse. “The Pageant” will succeed well, we hope, in quarters where success is a distinction.