connoisseurs.

All du Maurier's drawings in his best period are distinguished by the
sharpness of contrast between black and white in them. Ruskin, whilst
approving in his _Art of England_ of du Maurier's use of black to
indicate colour, thought he carried the black and white contrast to
chess-board pattern excess. In later years, submitting to the influence
of Keene's method, in which black is always used to secure effects of
tone instead of colour, du Maurier's style underwent a transformation
which, from the purely artistic point of view, was not to its advantage.
Keene's method was justified in his extreme sensitiveness to what
painters define as "values"--the relation in tone of one surface to
another. This particular kind of sensitiveness was not characteristic of
du Maurier's vision, nor was a style so dependent upon subtlety of the
kind suited to express his mind. And here it is interesting to emphasise
the connection which is so often overlooked between temperament and
style. In the observation of human character itself du Maurier always
perceived the broad and distinctive features; the broad ones of type
rather than the subtle ones of individuals; things for him were either
black or white, beautiful or ugly. The twilight in which beauty and
ugliness merge, in which the heroic and the villainous mingle, was
unknown to him--a region in which the white figure of a hero is as
impossible as the black one of a real villain. He observes subtly enough
the airs of those who interest him, but he is not interested in
everybody. He doesn't think much of people who, through lack either of
physical or moral stature, can enter the drawing-room unperceived. He is
not sympathetic to neutral characters. It was because the Victorians
cultivated magnificence that his somewhat rhetorical art described them
with such reality. His pictures were a mirror to the age. Keene was like
Shakespeare--the types he drew might change in costume with the times,
but would reappear in every generation. But du Maurier only drew
Victorians. And thus his art has that vivid local colour which is the
vital characteristic of effective satire.

It is significant that the artist had nursed throughout his youth an
enthusiasm for Byron. Until the influence of Mr. Bernard Shaw had
chilled the air, England remained under the spell of that romantic poet.
The Victorians in everything betrayed the love of glamour. They exalted
the unknown Disraeli out of shee