14 
or the Royal Academy. One of the minor activities of this group of 
artists was the designing of illustrations to be engraved on wood 
for books and magazines, an art which was carried to a high pitch 
of perfection in the period known as "the sixties", but actually ex- 
tending from about 1855—1875. The principal engravers of these 
designs by the Pre-Raphaelites and others were the brothers 
Daiziel, by whom a fine group of engravers' proofs is exhibited. 
These illustrations, perhaps, even more than the original draw- 
ings of the Pre-Raphaelites, had a great influence on the early art 
of Charles Ricketts, who, thirty or forty years ago, was the leading 
spirif, with his lifelong friend Charles Shannon, of another group of 
romanfic painters, draughtsmen and engravers, the arfists of "The 
Dial" and the Vale Press. 
Other tendencies and movements of English arf in the 19th 
Century too numerous to menfion, will be found exemplified among 
the drawings. It must never be supposed that art was confined to 
London. Most notable of the provincial schools, in the first half of 
the Century, was fhat of East Anglia, with Norwich as its centre, and 
Crome and Cotman, both etchers as well al painters, as its leading 
artists. Constable (1776—1837) and Bonington (1801—1828) were 
probably the only artists of their time whose work was known 
across the Channel and who exerted a real influence on landscape 
painfing in France. Among fhe later water colour artists De Wint 
(1784—1849) and Cox (1783—1859) are eminent, though both 
are overshadowed by the genius of their Contemporary Turner 
(1775—1851). 
Charles Keene (1823—1891) must be mentioned among the 
black and white artists for his masterly handling of the pen. He 
was, and remained, English to the core, and the influence of his 
exampie has not been feit, as was that of the much younger Aubrey 
Beardsley (1872—1898), on the Continent. 
For more than half a cenfury the Slade School of Arf in London, 
has atfached great importance to good drawing. Among the many 
young artists who were working fhere shortly before 1900, were 
Augustus John (b. 1879), William Orpen (1878—1931) and Ambrose 
McEvoy (1878—1927) of whom the first is one of the most brilliant 
of modern draughfsmen. In the work of their juniors it is probable 
that contacts with Continental art will be observed, though I think 
thaf the Selection Committee has, consciously or unconsciously,