Phil May

“ May was engaged to design the dresses for the Leeds pantomime, and flushed with success, or sickened with the squalid hand-to-hand life he had led since he was a boy—he was then a full-grown man of seventeen—he made up his mind to burn his boats and come to London, and there he became a tragedian. ”

“ Whistler, "is summed up in two words—Phil May!" Nor is this merely a New School of Art paradox. It is one which is held by artists of all grades alike, and even by the art editor who professes to know and supply what the public likes. That a youth who never had a lesson in drawing in his life should have earned such a reputation between the ages of seventeen and thirty, and should have gone above men as honoured in their profession as Sir John Tenniel and Mr. George du Maurier, and on a level with Charles Keene, Mr. Abbey and Mr. Gibson, is enough to make Mr. May's art extremely interesting. ”

“ The mantelpiece is peopled with little Japanese dolls, little bronzes and brasses, and figures carved in yellow ivory. These, with a few plaster casts of arms and legs which hang on the walls, a line of Japanese prints put around the ceiling "to try an effect," a few Japanese lanterns hanging from the roof, some Japanese lay-figures in armour standing round the walls, and a few sketches, are about all the decoration of this long sky-lit room. But most important of all is the index to as remarkable a story as was ever told by a successful man, a story which has never been told before. ”

“ Here the student of heredity will discern the rude germ of the artistic temperament which has so developed in the third generation. It was in the interests of the hereditary artistic strain that Mr. May was induced to tell the story. He is not so impressed as are many people with the necessity of having a grandfather, and knows no more about him than is related above. Mr. May's father was apprenticed as an engineer to George Stephenson, and worked in the drawing office of the great engineer at Newcastle, where he met his wife. ”

“ But Phil May's humour does not consist of making fat people thin, thin people fat, exaggerating features, putting big heads upon little legs, and such methods of distortion as we have so often seen resorted to. ”

“ The illustrations were already arranged for, so there was nothing for him to do. The disappointment, or long privation—for he was only eighteen at the time—or both, brought on an illness, and he returned to Leeds. A telegram from Mr. Russell brought him to London. The illustrations for the Christmas Number would not do, and Mr. May was asked to do them all himself—cartoon, illustrations, cover, and initials—in a week! He hired a room in a small hotel near the Princess's, and worked day and night, finished the whole thing, and was paid. ”

“ But though everyone is satisfied with his present work, I can only trust that the artistic majority will think with me that he has never done better than these drawings which are here collected. That at least is why I have published them. ”

“ But his art is not nearly so instructive as Mr. May himself; he is a human document to the hand of the realist, and the student of heredity—if ever there was one. He has been interviewed in a sketchy fashion by the journalistic Mrs. ”