785. Headpiece for The Art World

The weekly magazine Black and White, published from 6 February 1891 onwards, originally displayed a headmast designed by Charles Ricketts. He made quite a few other drawings for the magazine, some of which, oddly, were only published in the late 1890s. Among the earlier ones are eight illustrations done together with Reginald Savage (difficult to determine which artist was responsible for which drawing), a full-page drawing accompanying a poem by John Gray, and there is a headpiece for a series of notices about art written by M.H. Spielmann.

At first, I had marked that last drawing with a question mark because I wasn’t sure whether Ricketts was the artist, until I took another close look at it through a magnifying glass and spotted a tiny monogram.

Charles Ricketts, 'The Art World'
in Black and White, Vol. I, No. 3 (21 February 1891), p. 91

The monogram 'cR' is in the upper right-hand corner, near the head that adorns the ear of the bench that seats three muses holding a scroll. They represent (as the texts indicate) 'Color', 'Poesia' and 'Form'.

Charles Ricketts, monogram for 'The Art World'
in Black and White, Vol. I, No. 3 (21 February 1891), p. 91

The first instalment of 'The Art World' went without a headpiece, and after after it was introduced in the second one, it wasn’t used consistently (perhaps due to lack of space). In the first half of 1891, it decorated six out of seventeen of Spielmann's texts.

See earlier blogs about Black and White:
No. 45. Lux, Arts, Spes and Night (6 June 2012)
No. 579. Black and White Stall in 1892 (7 September 2022)