Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1917 — FAULTY WORK OF ARTISTS [ARTICLE]

FAULTY WORK OF ARTISTS

Writer’s Complaint Is in Effect That Illustrators Pay Too Little Attention to Text of Story. Z I describe by word and deed a sturdy young countryman, and lie becomes under pencil of my illustrator a sentimental noodle with long hair. I tell of the extraordinary achieyemeht of aVery old or a very weak person in the rescuing of a drowning Child, and my hero is pictured as a Hercules to whom the feat would drove - been no feat lit all. I put upon my country heroine the sunbonnet which is her natural and suitable head-cover-ing. anti sure as fate, she appears in a turban such as only an African mammy would wear. I describe a spotted dog, running as spotted dogs invariably run, under his carriage, and the artist makes him a solid black. A ~gentle protest to a friend produces the astonished and :ts- T tonishing reply that the artist is the most famous delineator of animals in America and that I should be proud to have his name under mine on the title-page. If he is the most famous delineator of animals in America, why could he not draw my little spotted dog? I do not suffer alone. Within a few years a leading American monthly published a story in which there were three characters, two men and a woman. Though one of the men appeared chiefly as a raconteur, his sex was made plain, not only by many indirect allusions, btft by a clear statement. Yet in the well-drawn, and no doubt very expensive fnll-page illustration, ’lie was a ‘"