With him the
fascination which soldiers and all things military have for the
boyish mind took the form of an intense eagerness to reproduce
in colour and line the gay pageant of the march. The skirl of the
fife and the tattoo of the drum inspired him with a desire, not to
shoulder a gun, but to seize a pencil. There was a shop in Piccadilly
where water-colour sketches of military types might frequently be
seen displayed to view, and to Reynolds junior a tramp thither of
several miles from the far west of London was as nothing, could he
but have the ecstatic joy of gazing, with nose flattened against
the window-pane, upon these transcendent works of art, for an hour
or more on end.
[Illustration]
This early training, to be regarded as the sure foundation upon
which the artist's later education was to rest, owed not a little,
perhaps, of its effectiveness to its casual and desultory nature.
The natural bent was allowed to reveal itself: development was
gradual, and (as it were) automatic. Individuality was neither
crushed nor cramped. On the contrary, it was given full play, and
that the work of Frank Reynolds is invested with so definite a
quality of personality is due in no small degree to the special
circumstances of his youthful training.
Heatherley's, in Newman Street, London, was his only school. Here,
for some time after his final abandonment of commerce for art as the
serious business of his life, Reynolds was a close and persistent
student.
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