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The name of Mr. Frank Gilbert Atwood, '78, has been a familiar by-word to every Harvard man since he was in college. This well deserved notoriety is due to the clever series of illustrations which have come from his pencil, beginning with his work in the Lampoon, which will always be popular. Crude in their style and faulty in their execution and showing a hand still untrained, these sketches are full of life and meaning. Every little line of the face conveys some definite idea and is as expressive as the maturer production of later years, showing an in-born talent for portraiture and caricature. From that time forward his methods and execution have steadily improved. His illustrations of Grant's "Little Tin Gods on Wheels" are of as much value as the trilogy itself. For several years after he had graduated from college he continued to draw for the Lampoon, his sketches being the chief attraction of the paper until the first series came to an end in the spring of 1880. The most famous of these past graduate Lampoon sketches are those illustrating "Rollo's journey to Cambridge" running through a whole year. By this time Mr. Atwood had acquired a peculiar style of his own which enables one to detect a sketch of his without looking for the name of the artist. Fortunately many of the sketches most deserving of preservation are collected in the "Sketches from the Lampoon." Even then his representation was not confined to the college for "Rollo" and the "Tin Gods" have had a large circulation in the outside world. When "Life" was started the name of Atwood among the artists gave assurance of a good paper. Here more improvement is noticed, yet the old peculiar style so well known still remains. His work on this paper has been confined almost entirely to small outline figure drawings. But no matter how small or trivial the same expressiveness remains as of old. Every Irishman is about to break out into his native brogue and Matthew Arnold, true to life, stands hesitatingly scanning his lecture notes. Well may the Lampoon be proud of her great son; but Mr. Atwood can better be called the father of Lampy.
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