This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ...It is a mixture of gaiety, with a tragic note--gaiety of colour outlined with sombreness of shadow, but beautiful colour as colour per se. The subjects of these drawings were many and varied in range; and what a world it was that the artist lived in. The personages of the Italian comedians appear in it again and again in many guises and in many situations; even Samuel Pepys and his London (Plate 31) figure in it; tales from the age of Louis Quinze; characters from the romances of Balzac and Theophile Gautier; 1830 was a magic and romantic date for Conder, and Mademoiselle Maupin a goddess. He saw Venice, with its gondolas and lagoons, through the eyes of Byron and Shelley. There are also lands where it is always afternoon--magic shores where, on a couch piled with luxurious cushions of indescribable purple hues, recline two nymphs clad in light robes of pale canary colour, probably reading a love-tale. Beyond, a calm sea and a blue sky barred with gleaming white clouds, where the shadows are purple; or we look under and through the arch of a rock, in the shade of which rest surely the sirens three, on to a sea coloured like a sapphire. A single figure bathes in the sea, and a terrace juts out into it, and farther along still are headlands, rocky islets, and great clouds of cumuli. We feel the land we stand on is one of "The Fortunate Islands." Even where the scene is London there is the same air of romance mingled with close observation of national phenomena. A drawing called "The Balcony" (Plate 65), illustrates this--a group of five women in white, black, and green dresses; to the right one of them, a dark beauty, Spanish in complexion, holds out a white shawl, which harmonises agreeably with her costume of shell...