In landscape, as in portraiture, we are greeted on the threshold
by ALBRECHT DÜRER. From his many drawings, water-colors, and the
beautifully engraved backgrounds in a number of his plates, we know him
to have been a profound student of natural forms and of atmospheric
effects, sensitive to the character of the country he portrays; and
it is a matter of regret that _The Cannon_ is the only plate in which
the landscape element outweighs in interest the figures. _The Cannon_,
which is dated 1518, is etched upon an iron plate, not necessarily
because Dürer was unacquainted with a suitable mordant for copper,
but rather, one is inclined to believe, because, etching having been
used in the decoration of arms and armor, iron would naturally suggest
itself as the most appropriate metal for the purpose. Although the
cannon (“The Nuremberg Field Serpent”), to the left, and the five
Turks, to the right, are the main motives of the composition, they are
drawn and bitten with lines of exactly the same weight and character
as the landscape itself, and we can, if we will, consider them as
accessory figures, concentrating our attention upon the altogether
delightful village, its church spire pointing heavenwards, while in
the distance wooded hills rise towards the sombre sky, and to the
left a seaport is indicated. Dürer either ignored or was unaware of
the effects to be obtained by repeated rebitings, and consequently
the plate is of a uniform tone. Within his self-imposed limits he has
thoroughly understood the possibilities of the medium and has availed
himself of them, adopting an open, linear technique, in marked contrast
to his highly elaborate engravings on copper of this period.
ALBRECHT ALTDORFER, who was born in Regensburg about 1480 and died
in February, 1538, is notable as one of the earliest interpreters of
landscape for its own sake. He has left us ten landscape etchings.
None of them is dated, but they clearly belong to his last period.
In them he has merely transferred to metal his mode of pen drawing,
an excellent style in a way, since it is linear and suggestive, but
lacking distinction and that passionate, dramatic quality which is so
impressive in the painting, _St. George_, in the Munich Gallery, the
engraving of the _Crucifixion_; or the _Agony in the Garden_, a drawing
in the Berlin Print Room.
[Illustration: ALBRECHT DÜRER. THE CANNON
Size of the original etching, 8⅝ × 12⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL. LANDSCAPE
Size of the original etching, 5⅝ × 8½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The etchings of AUGUSTIN HIRSCHVOGEL are even simpler in treatment
than those by Altdorfer. They bear dates from 1545 to 1549. The more
one studies his landscape plates, breathing the spirit of the true
nature lover, the more fascinating do they become. He has eliminated
all non-essentials, concentrating his attention upon what were to
him the most significant features, and in this respect he may have
influenced the work of more than one nineteenth century master.
HANS SEBALD LAUTENSACK, who was some twenty years Hirschvogel’s junior,
was born in Nuremberg about 1524. The greater number of his landscape
plates fall within the years 1551 and 1555. He is neither so simple nor
so direct as Hirschvogel, and his plates suffer from over-elaboration.
In an attempt to give a complete representation of the scene the value
of the line is lost, and, in the majority of cases, the composition is
lacking in repose.
For almost a century we have no landscape etchings of prime importance.
Then, in 1640, _Rembrandt_ appears on the scene with his _View of
Amsterdam_, the first of a series of twenty-seven masterpieces which,
beginning with this plate, comes to an end with _A Clump of Trees
with a Vista_ (1652). The _View of Amsterdam_ is, among Rembrandt’s
landscapes, comparable to the portrait of himself leaning on a stone
sill, inasmuch as it is, in its own simple linear mode, a model of what
etching can be at its best.
As in the case of all these etchings, with the exception of the _Three
Trees_ and the _Landscape with a Ruined Tower and Clear Foreground_,
the sky is left perfectly blank, and our imagination must supply the
quiet sunshine of a cloudless day or that delicate grayness which makes
Holland a perpetual delight to the painter.
The _Windmill_ (1641) is Rembrandt’s first _dated_ etching. It is truly
a portrait of a place, not only in its outer aspect, but in that inner
spirit which, if it be present, moves us so profoundly, as in the case
of Meryon’s etchings of Paris and Piranesi’s plates of ancient Roman
edifices; or, if it be absent, leaves us disappointed and cold. In the
_Windmill_, “we feel the stains of weather, the touch of time, on the
structure; we feel the air about it and the quiet light that rests
on the far horizon as the eye travels over dike and meadow; we are
admitted to the subtlety and sensitiveness of a sight transcending our
own; and even by some intangible means beyond analysis we partake of
something of Rembrandt’s actual mind and feeling, his sense of what the
old mill meant, not merely as a picturesque object to be drawn, but
as a human element in the landscape, implying the daily work of human
hands and the association of man and earth.”[12]
[12] Rembrandt’s Landscape Etchings. By Laurence Binyon. The
Print-Collector’s Quarterly. Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 414.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. THE WINDMILL
Size of the original etching, 5¾ × 8¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. THREE TREES
Size of the original etching, 8½ × 11 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
To the same year belong the _Landscape with a Cottage and Haybarn_ and
_Landscape with a Cottage and a Large Tree_, two delightfully spacious
plates. There is one etching in 1642, the _Cottage with a White
Paling_, in which dry-point is judiciously used to give richness to the
shadows.
To the following year, 1643, belongs the _Three Trees_, the most famous
of Rembrandt’s landscape etchings. Note how Rembrandt has suggested
the passing of a summer thunder-storm, the rain-charged clouds rolling
away to the left, while from the right the returning sunshine bathes
the composition in glory, making each freshly washed leaf and blade of
grass sparkle in its beams. Even the hard, slanting lines of rain in
the upper left portion of the plate have their purpose, affording a
needed contrast to the swiftly changing clouds, which the freshening
breeze drives before it over the peopled plain and the far-reaching sea
in the distance.
In 1645 there are five landscape etchings. If the _Three Trees_ is
Rembrandt’s most elaborate plate, _Six’s Bridge_ is, in some ways,
his most learned performance. According to tradition, it was etched
“against time,” for a wager, at the country house of Rembrandt’s
friend, Jan Six, while the servant was fetching the mustard, that
had been forgotten, from a neighboring village. There is, however,
nothing hasty or incomplete about it. It is, to use Whistler’s words,
“finished from the beginning,” beautifully balanced, not a line wasted,
of its kind a perfect work of art.
There are no more landscapes until 1650, a good year, since it gives
us eight plates, every one worthy of the most serious consideration.
Rembrandt by this time apparently had become dissatisfied with the
relatively limited range of light and dark obtainable by the pure
etched line, and from now onwards he relies more and more upon
dry-point to obtain his effects, at times executing his plates entirely
in that medium.
The _Landscape with a Haybarn and a Flock of Sheep_ is one of the
loveliest plates of this period. There is a brilliancy in the first
state, a quiet harmony in the elaborated second state, which makes a
choice difficult. Each, in its way, is of compelling beauty.
Hardly less delightful is the _Landscape with a Milkman_, with a view
of the sea to the right, while at the left the cottages snuggle beneath
their protecting trees.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. SIX’S BRIDGE
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ × 8¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. LANDSCAPE WITH A RUINED TOWER AND CLEAR
FOREGROUND
Size of the original etching, 4⅞ × 12⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. LANDSCAPE WITH A HAYBARN AND A FLOCK OF
SHEEP
Size of the original etching, 3¼ × 7 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. THREE COTTAGES
Size of the original etching, 6¼ × 8 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
The _Landscape with a Ruined Tower and Clear Foreground_ is, perhaps,
of all these etchings the noblest and the most dramatic. In the sky to
the left are piled thunder clouds. A faint breeze, the precursor of a
coming storm, gently moves the upper branches of the trees. There is
an expectant hush, a tenseness, and we are made to feel that in
a few minutes the first heavy raindrops will be driving through the
over-charged air. Otherwise all is still, the sky to the right being
yet quiet and undisturbed. With the fewest etched lines Rembrandt has
indicated the form and growth of the trees, adding, just where needed
to give emphasis and enrichment, touches of dry-point, concentrating
his richest blacks on the noble clump which shuts off the road leading
toward the left. With such simple means, with black lines and white
paper, he has given us by his art a more convincing record of one of
Nature’s noblest spectacles than most painters, with a full palette at
their command, could achieve in a lifetime of labor.
In the _Three Cottages_ dry-point is used with magnificent effect.
Early impressions of this masterpiece have a richness, a bloom, which
is unmatched among Rembrandt’s landscape plates. A fine impression
of the third state, with the added shading on the gabled end of the
first cottage, represents the plate admirably. To be seen at its best,
however, it should not be too heavily charged with ink, since the
tree forms thereby are confused. Work such as this is so seemingly
simple that one may readily overlook the power of analysis and the
superb draughtsmanship it displays. Everyone who loves Rembrandt’s
landscapes--and who that knows them does not love them?--must bitterly
regret that at about this time, in the very plenitude of his powers, he
saw fit to bring his landscape work to a close.
It is true that we have the _Goldweigher’s Field_ of 1651--an
unsurpassed masterpiece--and in the following year the _Landscape with
a Road Beside a Canal_ and _A Clump of Trees with a Vista_; but had he
treated a landscape motive with the passion which breathes from the
_Three Crosses_, _Christ Presented to the People_, or the _Presentation
in the Temple_, how much richer and fuller would landscape art have
been!
The _Goldweigher’s Field_, by tradition the country seat of the Receiver
General, Uytenbogært, whose portrait Rembrandt had etched in 1639 (The
_Goldweigher_), is, in point of suggestiveness, second to none of
Rembrandt’s plates. The eye is gently led from field to fertile field,
each with its own individual character and filled with interesting
little details, and finally rests upon the quiet sea which stretches to
the horizon.
Contemporary with Rembrandt, treating scenes essentially the same, a
whole school of etchers produced an enormous number of plates, many of
them charming, but none to be classed with the permanently great work
in the history of the art.
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. GOLDWEIGHER’S FIELD
Size of the original etching, 4¾ × 12⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: JACOB RUYSDAEL. WHEAT FIELD
Size of the original etching, 4 × 6 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
HERCULES SEGHERS is interesting because of his choice of wild,
rugged mountains for his subject-matter and of his experiments in color
printing, but as an etcher he is of historical importance only.
JACOB RUYSDAEL displays a knowledge of tree forms and an appreciation
of their beauty, rare at any time. His work at its best recalls that
of the great nineteenth century master, Théodore Rousseau, though
the latter’s few plates show a greater economy of means and an equal
affection for Nature in her wilder moods. The _Wheat Field_ is one of
Ruysdael’s most satisfying plates. The sky, with its rolling clouds, is
simply treated and shows a knowledge and reticence in the use of line
denied to the greater number of his more laborious contemporaries, who,
in the main, when they endeavored to “finish” a plate ended by leaving
it fatigued and stiff.
_Claude Gellée_, called _Claude Lorrain_, is the one seventeenth
century French landscape etcher. Born in the year 1600 in the Diocese
of Toul and the Duchy of Lorraine (whence he derives the name by which
he is best known), early orphaned, at the age of thirteen, after a
varied and picturesque boyhood, journeyed to Rome, thence to Naples,
and later to Venice. In 1627 he settled permanently in Rome, where he
remained until his death in 1682.
His etchings are the fruit of that indefatigable study of nature
which he pursued almost until the day of his death. Heedless of
fatigue, he would spend day after day, from sunrise until nightfall,
noting every phase of dawn, the glory of sunrise, or the majesty of
the sunset hours. For him the modest nook held no charm and exerted
no fascination. He chose for his theme Nature in her more spacious
aspects--wide-stretching horizons and deep overarching skies, with
clumps of stately trees, between and beyond which are to be seen
castle-crowned hills, or a half-ruined temple, the relic of Imperial
Rome, a passionate love for which burned with a steady flame in Claude,
more Roman than the Romans themselves in his worship of the Eternal
City and all that could recall her vanished glory.
Claude’s paintings are to be seen in nearly every European gallery
of importance, but his etchings are seldom met with. Really fine
impressions (by which alone they can be judged) are unfortunately very
rare. His work would seem to divide itself into two periods: 1630 to
1637, and 1662 and 1663. It is to the earlier period that his finest
work belongs, the later plates being heavy and stiff in treatment.
Claude’s etchings show none of that economy and suggestiveness of line
which make of Rembrandt’s most summary sketch a continuous stimulus and
delight. They are highly wrought pictures, as carefully and lovingly
finished in all details as are the paintings themselves. Etching,
dry-point, the burnisher, and a tone produced by roughening the surface
of the plate with pumice-stone or some similar material, all are called
into play to produce a harmonious result, and of their kind there is
nothing finer.
The _Dance Under the Trees_ shows Claude in his most purely pastoral
vein--classic pastoral--seen through Virgilian eyes and interpreted in
the spirit of the Eclogues. It is carefully composed and beautifully
drawn; and if, to our more modern taste, there seems a little too
obvious an “arrangement,” with the two vistas balancing one another at
the right and left of the central group of trees, we must remember that
landscape, no less than literature or costume, has its fashions, and
that, in Claude’s time, balance and proportion were esteemed of greater
value than the freedom and spontaneity which we today, more insistent
on the individual note, esteem the chief charm of etching.
_Le Bouvier_, etched in 1636, is accounted Claude’s masterpiece.
“For technical quality of a certain delicate kind it is the finest
landscape etching in the world. Its transparency and gradation have
never been surpassed.”[13] It is the work of a real nature lover and
true poet, and sums up in a few square inches all that is best of
Claude’s art when it has shaken itself free from the “set scene” and
theatricalities. Technically it is not less admirable. The copper has
been caressed, so to speak, with the needle, until it responds by
yielding all those elusive half lights and luminous shadows which play
among the leaves of the noble trees to the left, while on the right
the landscape fairly swims in light and air. For this same quality of
sunlight Claude tries again and again in his etchings, in _Sunrise_
with complete success. When he essays to interpret Nature in her
sterner moods, as in the _Flock in Stormy Weather_ (his one plate of
the year 1651), he is far less happy. The clouds, which should be heavy
with rain, are unconvincing, though the suggestion of movement in the
trees is excellent, and in no other plate has he treated architecture
with a firmer touch or in a more picturesque manner.
[13] Etching and Etchers. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. London; Macmillan
& Co. 1868. p. 178.
After the middle of the seventeenth century, etching, as an original,
creative art, is increasingly neglected for almost two hundred years,
though it grows in popularity as an easy and expeditious mode of
“forwarding” a plate to be finished with the burin.
[Illustration: CLAUDE LORRAIN. LE BOUVIER
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ x 7¾ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: CHARLES JACQUE. TROUPEAU DE PORCS
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ × 8½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
To CHARLES JACQUE, in the early “forties,” belongs the honor of having
restored etching to its proper and legitimate place as a suggestive and
linear art. His method is based on a thorough understanding of its
limitations and qualities as exemplified by Rembrandt and his lesser
contemporaries in Holland; and both by his work (he has left between
five and six hundred plates) and by his influence, he is the father of
the nineteenth century revival of etching, not only in France, where
its possibilities were appreciated at once by the Romantic group and
the “Men of 1830,” but in England, through Seymour Haden and Whistler.
Charles Jacque was born in Paris on May 23, 1813, and to the last
(he died at the ripe age of 81, in the year 1894) he retained, in
country life, something of the city man’s point of view, the love of
the “picturesque,” the anecdotic, in marked contrast to his greater
contemporary, Jean-François Millet, whose few etchings form an epic of
the soil even more powerful than his paintings. For all that, Jacque is
a true etcher, working along the soundest lines and safest traditions.
He is unequal: his work suffers at times from a hankering for “finish”;
but at his best his little plates are delightfully suggestive, every
line being there for a purpose, and not a line too much.
Up to 1848 he had completed some three hundred etchings and dry-points,
and it is among this group that many “masterpieces in little” are to
be found. It would be hard to find a better model of style than the
_Wheat Field_. The print is scarcely larger than a visiting card, but
it conveys a sense of spaciousness and “out of doors” sadly lacking
in many a painting in full color and of a hundred times its size. The
_Truffle Gatherers_ is likewise of modest size, but the landscape with
its leafless trees is full of air, and the sense of life and movement,
as well as the effective composition of the “rooters” accompanied by
their herdsman, is, from many points of view, unexcelled.
The _Storm--Landscape with a White Horse_ is one of Jacque’s
finest interpretations of wind and rough weather. This dry-point,
unfortunately very rare, recalls the work of Rembrandt in his mature
period. The sky, slashed with driving showers, the trees swayed this
way and that by the gusty wind, the white horse with legs firmly
braced, its mane and tail matted by the rain against its neck and
flank, all combine to heighten and intensify the effect.
Younger than Jacque by four years (he was born February 15, 1817),
CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY differs from him in that it is the lyric, the
spiritual aspect of nature, rather than the incidental and picturesque
details of country life, which moved him.
[Illustration: CHARLES JACQUE. STORM--LANDSCAPE WITH A WHITE HORSE
Size of the original dry-point, 6⅜ × 8⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. DEER IN A WOOD
Size of the original etching, 6⅜ × 4⅜ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
None of the other Barbizon men has so successfully interpreted the
freshness of early morning, the sparkle of sunrise on tender
young leaves or dew-bespangled grass, the tranquility of the quiet
pool hidden in the depth of the forest. His first plate, etched in
collaboration with his friend Meissonier, is dated 1838, and all
through the “forties” Daubigny continued to etch either original
motives or such as were commissioned by editors for the embellishment
of various publications, in many cases poems and songs of a pastoral
nature. It is, however, to the following decade that his finest work
belongs--a series of little masterpieces which, in their way, remain
unequalled. His plates, small in size, are as carefully worked out
as those of Claude but with a truer feeling for the elusive charm of
still, untroubled places. Later his style grows broader and bolder.
Less is actually said, more is suggested. There is a freedom in his
line work which these etchings of his middle period had hardly led us
to expect but for which, in truth, they were the finest preparation. He
has learned to eliminate the non-essential; and in etching the _art of
omission_ is the supreme virtue.
One of the most suggestive plates of his middle period is _Deer in a
Wood_. The treatment is perfectly simple and straightforward, truly
linear, as all good etching should be, but the spirit of the scene
is captured and portrayed in these few, seemingly careless, lines.
_Deer Coming Down to Drink_ is another altogether delightful plate in
the same series. The early morning air is vibrant with the glory of
sunrise, and the little leaves clap their hands in joy.
“Has it not often occurred to you, in your explorations as a tourist,
to see suddenly open before you a break in the landscape, a little
valley, calm, in repose, full of elegant and tranquil forms, of
discreet and harmonious colors, of softened shadows and lights,
bordered by hillsides with rounded and retiring forms and where no
step seems to have troubled the poetic silence? A pond, placed there
like a mirror, reflects the picture, and bears on its cup-like edge
sheaves of rushes, coltsfoot, arrow-heads, water-strawberries and the
white and yellow flowers of the water lily, amid which swarm a buzzing
world of insects and gnats.... As you approach, some heron, occupied
in dressing its plumage, flies off, snapping its beak; the snipe runs
away, piping its little cry; then everything falls again into silence,
and the valley, welcoming you as its guest, takes up under your eyes
its mysterious work.”[14] All this and more Daubigny gives us by his
art.
[14] Count Clément de Ris. L’Artiste. June, 1853.
[Illustration: CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. DEER COMING DOWN TO DRINK
Size of the original etching, 6⅛ × 4⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY. MOONLIGHT ON THE BANKS OF
THE OISE
Size of the original etching, 4⅜ × 6½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
Daubigny’s success as a painter, the constantly increasing demand for
his work, left him little time, as years went by, for etching. “If
only I could paint a picture that _wouldn’t_ sell,” he once said in
sheer desperation, and, momentarily, his superb renderings of the
mystery of evening and night accomplished his object, though now they
are jealously guarded in some of the world’s finest collections. But
to _etch_ night, to _suggest_ moonlight--there was a problem indeed!
Whistler in his “Nocturnes” paints, so to speak, on his plate with
printer’s ink. Daubigny relies on lines alone, to produce his result.
“_Night cannot be etched_” is the dictum of more than one authority.
No, nor sunlight either, nor clouds! None of these things can be
pictured so that blind eyes can see them. But to those who will meet
the etcher half way, who are content with a suggestion and are capable
of reconstructing from it the artist’s mood, these simple linear plates
of Daubigny’s last period are a revelation and a delight. _Moonlight
on the Banks of the Oise_ measures scant four by six inches, yet what
a feeling of space there is in it! Only a born etcher could have
succeeded by means so simple, and seemingly inadequate, in capturing
the very spirit of such a scene.
Corot’s etched work comprises fourteen plates. It was not until 1845,
when he was in his fiftieth year, that he made his first experiment.
“Corot took a prepared copper-plate and drew in the outlines and masses
of the well-known _Souvenir of Tuscany_, but did not proceed to the
‘biting in’ process. Some years later Félix Bracquemond discovered the
plate in a nail-box at Corot’s studio and begged the master to complete
it, offering to take charge of the ‘biting in.’ Corot then took the
plate and added the tones and details of the final state.... There was
something in the use of mordants and acids that seemed to frighten
Corot, and he always called in some good friend such as Bracquemond,
Michelin or Delaunay to assist in this delicate process.”[15]
[15] Le Père Corot. By Robert J. Wickenden. The Print-Collector’s
Quarterly. Vol. 2, No. 3. p. 382.
In etching his method is as personal as in his painting. He entirely
disregards all the accepted canons of the art. Line, _as line_, hardly
exists in his plates; it is scribble, scribble, everywhere. The tree
trunks, the rocks, foreground and distance, often the foliage itself,
all are as “wrong as wrong can be,” so far as accurate representation
is concerned. Yet Corot, great artist and great nature poet, can
transgress every rule and still succeed in conveying his message. In
the best of his etchings he _does_ succeed admirably. _Souvenir of
Italy_ and _Environs of Rome_ of 1865 (Corot was then nearly seventy
years of age) are among the most interesting prints of the period. In
these plates, and others like them, Corot has given free rein to his
poetic and imaginative powers and has drawn upon his memory of the
Italy of his youth. In method, in their disregard of line, form
and texture, they are shining examples of what etching should _not_
be. In decorative quality, poetic suggestion, and sentiment they are
altogether delightful.
[Illustration: CAMILLE COROT. SOUVENIR OF ITALY
Size of the original etching, 11⅝ × 8⅝ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: JEAN-FRANÇOIS MILLET. THE GLEANERS
Size of the original etching, 7½ × 10 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
In MILLET’S etchings the landscape and the figures are so inter-related
as to make any separate study of them unavailing. They are models of
significant draughtsmanship and profound feeling, in which nothing
is introduced that does not bear directly upon the main theme.
_Shepherdess Knitting_, _Peasants Going to Work_, _Two Men Digging_,
and above all the _Gleaners_, have each their perfect setting. The
wide-stretching plain, slightly undulating, shimmers in the hot summer
sunshine, which bathes in a golden glow the three women gleaning, the
harvesters gathering in the rich fruits of their toil, and the little
village, snuggling amid its trees in the far distance to the right.
Etchers, like poets, are “born, not made.” But, as also in the case
of poets, natural gifts will avail little if they are not reinforced
by that capacity for taking infinite pains, through which alone a man
may so master his medium as to shape it readily to his artistic needs.
The etched work of SEYMOUR HADEN is no chance happening. It is the
fruit of close and analytical study, by a man of forceful character
and scientific attainments, of the best model of style, the etchings
of Rembrandt; supplemented by a familiarity with the work of his
contemporaries in France, the land of clear and logical thinking; and
in no art is clarity and brevity of speech more essential than in
etching. From the beginning, Seymour Haden was in possession of all
his powers, both in etching and in dry-point. There is no uncertainty
in that which he wishes to say, no fumbling in his manner of saying
it. The reticences and half-hesitations of Daubigny are not for him;
there is no place for Corot’s scribbled poetry. He will give us a
strong man’s interpretation of the lovely English landscape, in which
he takes a pride, as in any other personal possession--God’s visible
and abounding bounty to a superior people. It is “the bones of things”
(his own phrase) that he wishes, above all else, to give. At his best
he succeeds magnificently, but in much of his work, structurally fine
though it be, it is the frame rather than the spirit that he portrays.
[Illustration: SEYMOUR HADEN. CARDIGAN BRIDGE
Size of the original etching, 4½ × 5⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: SEYMOUR HADEN. BY-ROAD IN TIPPERARY
Size of the original etching, 7½ × 11¼ inches]
[Illustration: SEYMOUR HADEN. SUNSET IN IRELAND
Size of the original dry-point, 5⅜ × 8½ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
[Illustration: SEYMOUR HADEN. SAWLEY ABBEY
Size of the original etching, 10 × 14⅞ inches
In the Collection of the Author]
_A Water Meadow_ (incidentally, a plate which the artist himself liked)
is a fine transcript of a sudden shower in the Hampshire lowlands. It
is bold and painter-like, admirable from every point of view, though
some may prefer _On the Test_, with its truly noble sky, etched later
in the day from a somewhat different point of view. _Cardigan Bridge_
is a model of what a sketch should be, free, suggestive, spontaneous,
yet full of knowledge. It is one of five similar plates, etched
in a single day, August 17, 1864, a “good day” indeed, such as rarely
comes to etchers or to painters! The more one sees of modern etching,
the more one is inclined to value work of this order. It is so easy,
so fatally easy, to make wriggles in the water and scribbles in the
sky; but to suggest, by these seeming careless loops and latchets, the
flow of the river, the movement of clouds, the splendor of the setting
sun--_that_ indeed is another matter! Yet all this, and more, Seymour
Haden has done in a magisterial manner.
_By-road in Tipperary_ is the largest and most highly prized of his
woodland plates and well deserves the reputation it so long has
enjoyed. Structurally the trees are very fine, both as to branch and
stem drawing; and, as in the two plates of _Kensington Gardens_, the
suggestion of foliage with the light filtering through the leaves is
quite beautiful. _Sunset in Ireland_ is a plate which the artist,
the collector, and the general public all unite in praising. “_That_
is the plate,” said Seymour Haden, shortly before his death, “which,
in years to come, will fetch the enormous prices!” And his prophecy
has come true. Both in its earlier states, less rich in burr, with a
luminous evening effect, and in the later and darker impressions, it is
“a thing of beauty”--one of the most remarkable landscape plates of
modern times, wherein the artist has captured, for once, all the poetry
and melancholy sentiment of the twilight hour. _Sawley Abbey_, on the
River Ribble in Lancashire, has, to some of us, however, a “swing” and
pattern, which make of it a better and more manly plate. It must be
seen in an early state to be adequately judged. For some inexplicable
reason the artist saw fit later to “clean up” the sky and all the
foreground to the right, leaving the plate cold, empty, and almost
meaningless.
_Nine Barrow Down_, a dry-point, is in Haden’s happiest vein. It is
instinct with that priceless quality, the “art which conceals art,” and
is so seeming simple that one may readily forget that its “simplicity”
is the result of a most rigid selection of the essential lines, guided
by the knowledge of a lifetime.
There is a growing tendency among the younger and more “advanced”
collectors to belittle Seymour Haden and his work. Unquestionably there
are many etchings which fall far short of his best; but _at his best_,
in the dozen or two plates of which he himself approved, he towers far
above any of his contemporaries, and there seems little likelihood of
his supremacy in landscape being seriously threatened.
[Illustration: J. A. McN. WHISTLER. ZAANDAM (First State)
Size of the original etching, 5⅛ × 8⅝ inches
In the Collection of Howard Mansfield, Esq.]
[Illustration: REMBRANDT. VIEW OF AMSTERDAM FROM THE EAST
Size of the original etching, 4⅛ × 5⅞ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]
WHISTLER, “the greatest etcher and the most accomplished
lithographer who ever lived” (according to Mr. Joseph Pennell),
seems to have interested himself in landscape hardly at all. Not even
his most ardent disciples would assert that the master’s few purely
landscape plates contribute greatly to the pyramid of his fame. But
even here one must tread softly. _Whistlerium tremens_ is still a
highly contagious disease; and has not his official biographer written
“All his work is alike perfect”? How then may a modest lecturer presume
to praise or compare? Let Mr. Pennell speak: “Look at Rembrandt’s
prints made, I do not know whether with Amsterdam or Zaandam in the
background, and then at Whistler’s of the same subjects. Rembrandt drew
and bit and printed these little plates as no one had up to his time.
But Whistler is as much in advance of Rembrandt as that great artist
was of his predecessors. In these little distant views of absolutely
the same subject, Whistler has triumphed. It is not necessary to
explain how: you have only to see the prints to know it.... The older
master is conservative and mannered; the modern master, respecting all
the great art of the past, is gracious and sensitive, and perfectly
free.”
“You have only to see the prints to know it.” Well, let us look at
two of them: Rembrandt’s _View of Amsterdam_, of 1640, and Whistler’s
_Zaandam_. “Why drag in Velasquez?” the master of the gentle art of
making enemies is reported to have said, upon one historic occasion.
This time, so far as landscape etching is concerned, may it not be
Rembrandt’s turn to say, “Why drag in Whistler?”