PAVEMENT ART.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2479, 21 August 1903, Page 6

PAVEMENT ART.

A phase of London street life is described by C. L. McCluer Stevens, vho introduces the reader to the "artists" who gain a precarious living by decorating pavements with drawings in crayon and chalk. He states that one of the oldest pavement aitists with whom he has been brought in contact declares that the father of the craft was ons Paddy Keogh, who little more than forty years ago kept an unpretentious open-air pictare-gallery in the then notorious Katcliffe Highway. For a long time he had the field practically to himßelf, but success begat imitators. The newcomers had no canvas, nor money to purchase any, so they chose the sidewalk as their atelier, and inscribed their sketches on the bare flags. The " aitspread westward. The pavement of Belgravia blossomed forth incontinently into blue and red and white replicas of famous works. Landseers and Turners in crayon vied with Claudes in chalk and Canalettis in colours. Then came the era of the cut salmon on the dish and the impossible eunset,as being easier of accomplishment. Lastly, men were found so lost to all sense of honour ub to hire their sketches at so much a cay, and coax the elusive penny from the pockets of the fickle public by a display of work which was in no ■ease their own. The genuine pavement artist, however, considers these latter individuals unworthy even of contempt. The old fellow, for instance, who for nearly a couple of decades has taken up his " pitch " outside Hyde Park, near the Marble Arch, is so anxious not to be identified with these pariahs ef the " profession " that he will at once proceed to sketch, for the delectation of any doubter, a duplicate of any one of his " pictures." An old sailor, whose usual " pitch " is at the new Oxford-street end of'Shaftesburyavenus, has recently introducd a novel variation of the familiar stereotyped class of picture. They are picked oat with Berlin wool on perforated canvas, the " artist" performing the work as he sitß in the san in full view of passers-by. His average takings, he says, are about two shillings a day, bat he occasionally sells a picture or two, his patrons being mostly seafaring men like himself.. " The only woman pavement artist in London," as she proudly dubs herself, is usually to be found at the back of St. Martin's Church, immediately opposite the Lowther Arcade. The pictures—such as Ihey are—are all her own work. This young lady places her earnings as high as five shillings a day, " taking one day with another." But this average applies only to the dayß when she was able to exhibit. Wet weather is the bugbear of the pavement artists, for then they cannot show at all. Even a smart shower is sufficient to undo the work of hours, and the poor " artist " has to begin all over again.