ABSTRACT
May’s view of life was metropolitan; he understood the streets, the gin palaces, the music halls and the clubs better than anyone, but as an artist and observer his curiosity did not end with London, Sydney or Paris. As a tolerable horseman, he was always anxious to ride out to Rotten Row or ride down to Richmond Park for a canter with a friend. He wandered through Kent as the illustrator of one of Burnand’s books and he looked for material in rural France, particularly in Picardy, and made several trips to Holland. Many artists in May’s generation made a pilgrimage to Volendam in Holland, a picturesque village on the Zeider Zee, whose quaint fishermen and women in clogs responded to some need within. This stage-managed artists’ sketching ground seems extremely artificial, but many illustrators such as Dudley Hardy and Tom Browne found the material useful. Studies by May of this place are robust, and coloured ones of Edam show where the artist might have gone had he shaken off his urchins and ragamuffins.
