of his collected works entitled _L’Art Romantique_, Baudelaire
mentions the following etchers as among those through whose efforts
the medium was to recover its ancient vitality: Seymour Haden, Manet,
Legros, Bracquemond, Jongkind, Meryon, Millet, Daubigny, Saint-Marcel,
Jacquemart, and Whistler. With at least two of these, on the evidence
of his published correspondence,[2] he had personal relations:
Bracquemond and Meryon. The name of the former occurs frequently in the
letters with reference to a device which Baudelaire wished to adopt as
a frontispiece to the second edition of _Fleurs du Mal_. The idea of
this device came to him, as he writes to Félix Nadar (May 16, 1859),
while turning the leaves of the _Histoire des Danses Macabres_, by
Hyacinthe Langlois. It was to be “an arborescent skeleton, the legs
and the ribs forming the trunk, the arms extended in the form of a
cross breaking into leaf and shoot, and protecting several rows of
poisonous plants arranged in rising tiers of pots, as in a greenhouse.”
In casting about for an artist to execute this design, Baudelaire
mentions and dismisses Doré, Penguilly--whom he afterward wished he
had taken--and Célestin Nanteuil. Finally, perhaps at the instance of
his publisher, Poulet-Malassis, he chose Bracquemond,--a most unhappy
selection as it turned out, for that artist was either unable or
unwilling to grasp the poet’s conception, and the plate which he etched
for this purpose was not used. A few proofs were pulled, however, and
impressions in both the first and second states of the plate are now
in the Samuel P. Avery collection in the New York Public Library.
[2] Charles Baudelaire: Lettres, 1841-1866. Paris, 1907.
[Illustration: BRACQUEMOND. FRONTISPIECE FOR “LES FLEURS DU MAL” OF
BAUDELAIRE
The seven plants symbolize the Seven Deadly Sins, and the outstretched
arms of the skeleton will support, later, the Fruits of Evil. This
romantic and remarkable frontispiece was never used. Baudelaire
criticized the drawing of the skeleton severely, as well as the spirit
and arrangement of the whole design.
Size of the original etching, 6¾ × 4⁵⁄₁₆ inches]
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
From the etching by Félix Bracquemond. Of the same size as the original
etching. Evidently an excellent likeness, since it exactly renders that
ecclesiastical aspect of the poet which made one of his friends compare
him to a cardinal.]
Baudelaire’s negotiations with the “terrible Bracquemond,” as he came
to call him, were carried on for the most part through Poulet-Malassis,
which perhaps affords a partial explanation of the misunderstanding
concerning the _macabre_ frontispiece. And, although he speaks in one
letter of having met the artist and repeated verbally the instructions
which he had already given, with characteristically minute attention to
detail, in writing, no such special interest attaches to this meeting,
by no means unique, as to that between Baudelaire and Meryon which
occurred about the same time, and to which we owe one of the most vivid
and fantastic presentments we possess of that mad genius. In his _Salon
of 1859_, Baudelaire had written of Meryon with an enthusiasm which
awoke a responsive reverberation in the breast of Victor Hugo.
“Since you know M. Meryon,” the latter wrote to Baudelaire (April 29,
1860), “tell him that his splendid etchings have dazzled me. Without
color, with nothing save shadow and light, chiaroscuro pure and simple
and left to itself: that is the problem of etching. M. Meryon solves it
magisterially. What he does is superb. His plates live, radiate, and
think. He is worthy of the profound and luminous page with which he has
inspired you.”
This page, which Baudelaire afterward incorporated in his _Peintres et
Aqua-fortistes_, where he speaks further of Meryon as “the true type of
the accomplished _aqua-fortiste_,” and praises the famous perspective
of San Francisco as his masterpiece, does, indeed, betray the subtle
penetration of the poet into the very spirit of his fellow-artist:
“By the severity, the delicacy, and the certitude of his design, M.
Meryon recalls what is best in the old _aqua-fortistes_. I have rarely
seen represented with more poetry the natural solemnity of a great
capital. The majesties of accumulated stone, _the spires pointing a
finger to the skies_, the obelisks of industry vomiting their thick
clouds of smoke heavenward, the prodigious scaffoldings of monuments
under repair, relieved against the solid mass of architecture, their
tracery of a filmy and paradoxical beauty, the misty sky, charged with
wrath and with rancor, the depths of the perspectives augmented by the
thought of the dramas contained therein,--none of the complex elements
of which the dolorous and glorious setting of civilization is composed
is here forgotten.”
Grateful for such recognition on the part of a distinguished man of
letters who was also accepted as one of the leading art critics of the
day in Paris, Meryon evidently wrote to Baudelaire, thanking him, and
asking permission to call; for in his letter of January 8, 1860, to
Poulet-Malassis, the poet writes as follows:
“What I write to-night,” he begins, “is worth the trouble of writing:
M. Meryon has sent me his card, and we have met. He said to me: _You
live in a hotel whose name must have attracted you, because of the
relation it bears, I presume, to your tastes._--Then I looked at the
envelope of his letter. On it was ‘Hôtel de _Thèbes_,’ and yet his
letter reached me.”
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF CHARLES MERYON
From the etching by Félix Bracquemond, done in 1853
Size of the original etching, 8⁷/₁₆ × 6⅛ inches]
[Illustration: MERYON. LE PONT AU CHANGE
“In one of his great plates, he has substituted for a little balloon
a flight of birds of prey, and, when I remarked to him that it was
lacking in verisimilitude to put so many eagles into a Parisian sky,
he replied that what he had done was not devoid of foundation in fact,
since _ces gens-là_ [the imperial government] had often released eagles
so as to study the presages, according to the rite,--and that this had
been printed in the newspapers, even in _Le Moniteur_.”
Charles Baudelaire in a letter to Poulet-Malassis (January 8, 1860).]
It is necessary to interrupt the letter at this point to explain
what is obscure in the foregoing allusion for one not familiar with
Baudelaire’s haunts and homes in Paris. He was living at this time,
not in the Hôtel Pimodan where he dwelt so long, and where he held
those famous meetings described by Gautier in his introductory essay
to _Fleurs du Mal_, but in modest quarters in the Hotel de Dieppe, 22,
rue d’Amsterdam, whose principal advantage was its proximity to the
Gare de l’Ouest whence he took the train for Honfleur on his frequent
visits to his mother. Thus, through a bizarre confusion between the two
words, _Dieppe_ and _Thèbes_, is explained Meryon’s curious mistake in
addressing his letter to Baudelaire.
The poet proceeds with the following report of their conversation: “In
one of his great plates,[3] he [Meryon] has substituted for a little
balloon a flight of birds of prey, and, when I remarked to him that it
was lacking in verisimilitude to put so many eagles into a Parisian
sky, he replied that what he had done was not devoid of foundation in
fact, since _ces gens-là_ [the imperial government] had often released
eagles so as to study the presages, according to the rite,--and that
this had been printed in the newspapers, even in _Le Moniteur_.
[3] The _Pont-au-Change_.
“I must tell you that he makes no attempt to conceal his respect for
all superstitions, but he explains them badly, and he sees cabal
everywhere.
“He drew my attention to the fact, in another of his plates, that the
shadows cast by one of the masonry constructions of the _Pont-Neuf_[4]
on the lateral wall of the quay represented exactly the profile of a
sphinx; that this had been, on his part, quite involuntary, and that he
had only remarked this singularity later, on recalling that this design
had been made a short time before the _coup d’état_. But the Prince
is the real person who, by his acts and his visage, bears the closest
resemblance to a _sphinx_.
[4] An error of Baudelaire’s. The plate is the _Petit-Pont_.
“He asked me if I had read the tales of a certain Edgar Poe. I answered
that I knew them better than any one else, and for a good reason. He
then asked me in a very emphatic manner, if I believed in the reality
of this Edgar Poe. I naturally asked him to whom he attributed all
his tales. He replied: ‘_To a society of men of letters who are very
clever, very powerful, and who are in touch with everything._’ And
here is one of his reasons: ‘The _Rue_ Morgue. _I have made a design
of the_ Morgue.--_An_ Orang-ou-tang. _I have often been compared
to_ a monkey.--_This monkey murders_ two women, a mother and her
daughter. _I also have morally assassinated_ two women, a mother and
her daughter.--_I have always taken the story as an allusion to my
misfortunes. You would be doing me a great favor if you could find out
for me the date when Edgar Poe, supposing that he was not helped by any
one, composed this story, so that I could see if the date coincided
with my adventures._’
“He spoke to me, with admiration, of Michelet’s book on _Jeanne d’Arc_,
but he is convinced that this book is not by Michelet.
“One of his great preoccupations is cabalistical science, but he
interprets it in a strange fashion that would make a cabalist laugh.
[Illustration: MERYON. LE PETIT PONT
“He drew my attention to the fact, in another of his plates, that the
shadows cast by one of the masonry constructions of the Pont-Neuf on
the lateral wall of the quay represented exactly the profile of a
sphinx; that this had been, on his part, quite involuntary, and that he
had only remarked this singularity later, on recalling that this design
had been made a short time before the _coup d’état_.”
Charles Baudelaire in a letter to Poulet-Malassis (January 8, 1860).
Size of the original etching, 9⅝ × 7¼ inches]
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF CHARLES MERYON
From the drawing by Léopold Flameng, made in May, 1858, in Meryon’s
room in the rue des Fossés-Saint-Jacques, the night before Meryon
became dangerously mad and was taken by his friends, in a cab, to
Charenton for the first time. Later he was discharged, and took up
his lodging in the rue Duperré, and in October, 1866, returned to
Charenton, where he died in February, 1868.]
“Do not laugh at all this with _méchants bougres_. For nothing in the
world would I wish to injure a man of talent....
“After he left me, I asked myself how it happened that I, who have
always had, in my mind and in my nerves, all that was needed to make
me mad, had not become so. Seriously, I addressed to heaven the
thanksgivings of the Pharisee.”
* * * * *
It is not surprising that Baudelaire should have been somewhat
disconcerted by this interview which confirmed so strikingly the
reports of the mental malady of his visitor to which he had alluded in
his _Salon of 1859_, and that he should soon have sought, after some
brief intercourse, to avoid personal and private encounters which might
have proved embarrassing. He gave notice in ways the artist could not
long mistake, that he did not wish to continue the acquaintance on a
footing of intimacy, though, as Crépet, in his _Charles Baudelaire_[5]
points out, he by no means ceased to interest himself in the artist,
several sets of whose _Eaux-Fortes sur Paris_ he was instrumental,
with one or two other admirers of Meryon, in having purchased by the
Ministry. Poor Meryon! With an incomplete realization of his own
condition which rendered him incapable of divining the real truth, he
felt he had offended Baudelaire in some way, and finally addressed
him the following appeal, tragic in its note of noble and unconscious
pathos:
[5] Charles Baudelaire: Étude biographique d’Eugène Crépet revue et
mise au jour par Jacques Crépet. Paris, 1907.
“_Dear Sir_: I called on you yesterday evening at the Hôtel de Dieppe.
I was informed that you had changed your domicile. I wished, above
all, to see you, in order to learn from your own lips that you were
not angry with me, for I do not think I have ever done anything to you
which could serve as a motive for your change of manner toward me.
Only, as the last letter which I wrote you has remained unanswered,
and as three times I have left my name at your dwelling without my
having had the slightest word from you, I am entitled to believe that
you have some reason for breaking with me. I did not remind you of
your promise to write a newspaper article about my work, because,
quite frankly, I was sure that you could make much better employment
of your time and of your literary skill. My etchings are known to
nearly all whom they could interest and rather too much good has been
said of them. As to the interruption of our relations, which have
been but of brief duration and of slight importance, I agree to this
without a word if such is your desire, and I shall conserve, none the
less, the recollection of the eminent services you have rendered me in
coming to see me, and in occupying yourself with me at a time when I
was utterly destitute.
“I have forwarded to M. Lavielle, whom I had the advantage of meeting
once with you, the set of my views, reworked and a trifle modified; he
has, perhaps, shown them to you. I have had difficulty in procuring
the ten sets of them (the printer being very busy at that time) that I
have disposed of with sufficient rapidity. I have no longer any left
and I have destroyed the _Petit-Pont_, which I propose to engrave
anew, after I have made in it some rather important corrections.
“Adieu, dear sir, with all possible good wishes.
“I am your sincere and devoted friend,
“C. MERYON.
“20, rue Duperré.”
The letter to which Meryon refers in the opening paragraph of the
foregoing as having remained unanswered by Baudelaire is doubtless that
bearing the date of February 23, 1860, which is the only other one
given by Crépet in the appendix to his volume. This is it:
“_Dear Sir_: I send you a set of my ‘Views of Paris.’[6] As you can
see, they are well printed, on Chinese tissue mounted on laid paper,
and consequently _de bonne tenue_. It is on my part a feeble means of
recognizing the devotion you have shown on my behalf. However, I dare
hope that they will serve sometimes to fix your imagination, curious
of the things of the past. I myself, who made them at an epoch, it is
true, when my naïve heart was still seized with sudden aspirations
toward a happiness which I believed I could attain, look over some of
these pieces with a veritable pleasure. They may, then, be able to
produce nearly the same effect upon you who also love to dream.
“I have not yet terminated the notes that I promised to make in order
to aid you in your work; at all events, I shall go to see you soon to
discuss the matter with you further. As the publisher recoils before
the steps which would still have to be taken, he says, for the placing
of these prints, there is nothing pressing about the affair. Thus, do
not let this disturb you.
“Adieu, monsieur; I hope that before your departure, I shall be able
to profit by the kindly reception that I have received from you.
“I am your very humble and very devoted servant.
“I am going to try to place sets with those persons who have been so
good, on your recommendation, as to interest themselves in this work.
“MERYON.
“20, rue Duperré.”
[6] Baudelaire had already tried to obtain a set of these prints. In
writing to Charles Asselineau (February 20, 1859) he commissions his
friend to get from Édouard Houssaye “all the engravings of Meryon
(views of Paris), good proofs on Chinese paper. _Pour parer notre
chambre_, as Dorine says.” He was not successful, however, at that
time. In quoting Molière, Baudelaire refers to Toinette’s speech in _Le
Malade Imaginaire_ (Act II slc· v).
This letter renders sufficiently clear the kind of service Baudelaire
had rendered Meryon over and above the public praise contained in his
writings. What, at the first glance, is less certain is the work on
which the poet was engaged at this time and for which Meryon, on his
own testimony, had promised to assist him with notes. In a foot-note
to this letter, M. Jacques Crépet states that it was “doubtless
_L’eau-forte est à la mode_, an anonymous article published by the
_Revue anecdotique_ in the latter half of April, 1862.” Personally,
I doubt the correctness of this conjecture. One has but to turn to
Baudelaire’s letters of the period to see that there was then under
discussion another piece of work for which Meryon would have been much
more likely to give assistance in the form of notes, since it directly
concerned himself. Indeed, the matter almost amounted to a project of
collaboration between Meryon and Baudelaire. The publisher Delâtre had
promised to bring out an album of the “Vues de Paris,” and had asked
the poet to prepare some text for the plates. The first reference to
this tentative undertaking occurs in Baudelaire’s letter of February
16, 1860 (just a week before Meryon’s), to Poulet-Malassis:
“And then Meryon!”--he broaches the matter abruptly, after having
expressed his impatience at the attitude of two other artists,
Champfleury and Duranty, friends of his, toward Constantin Guys, and
at a certain note of pedantry and dogmatism that was stealing into art
under the influence and sanction of “realism”--“And then Meryon! Oh, as
for him, it is intolerable. Delâtre asks me to write some text for the
album. Good! there is an occasion to write some reveries--ten lines,
twenty or thirty lines--on beautiful engravings, the philosophical
reveries of a Parisian _flaneur_. But Meryon, whose idea is different,
objects. I am to say: on the right you see this; on the left you see
that. I must say: here originally there were twelve windows, reduced to
six by the artist, and finally I must go to the Hôtel de Ville to find
out the exact epoch of the demolitions. M. Meryon talks, his eyes fixed
on the ceiling, and without listening to any observation.”
Thus it was historical and antiquarian notes that, in all probability,
Meryon had promised to jot down to facilitate the composition of
a running commentary on the etchings. Meryon’s reference to the
reluctance of the publisher in the very same paragraph in which
he speaks of these notes, serves to remove the least doubt as to
what is meant. When he tells Baudelaire not to be disturbed, it is
clearly as to the time at his disposal for the preparation of his
text. Baudelaire, however, seems to have been less concerned about
his own share in the work than about the fate of the project as a
whole. Evidently he was not satisfied at the prospects of the work
with Delâtre, for, on March 9, 1860, he wrote in a postscript to
Poulet-Malassis:
“I turn my letter, to ask you, very seriously, if it would not be
advisable for you to be the publisher of Meryon’s album (which will
be augmented) and for which I am to write the text. You know that,
unfortunately, this text will not be in accordance with my wishes.
“I warn you that I have made overtures to the house of Gide....
“This Meryon does not know how to go about things; he knows nothing
of life. He does not know how to sell; he does not know how to find a
publisher. His work is readily salable.”
And again, on March 13, he writes, in response to some proposition from
his friend:
“Relative to Meryon, do you mean by _buying the plates_ to buy the
metal plates, or rather the right of selling an indefinite number
of proofs from them? I can conceive that you fear the conversations
with Meryon. You should carry on the negotiations by letter (20, rue
Duperré). I warn you that Meryon’s great fear is lest the publisher
should change the format and the paper.... What you say to me of
Meryon does not affect what I write to you concerning him.”
The excellent business sense, the note of prudence and painstaking,
that comes out in all this correspondence on the part of Baudelaire,
and which is scarcely less notable than his unwearied devotion to the
interests of his friends, ought to go far toward discountenancing the
theory that a poet cannot be a good man of affairs. Still again he
writes on the same subject, with recapitulations of what he had said
before, to the same correspondent:
“I am very much embarrassed, _mon cher_, to reply to you relatively to
the Meryon affair. I have no rights in the matter whatsoever; M. Meryon
has repulsed, with a species of horror, the idea of a text composed
of a dozen little poems or sonnets; he has refused the idea of poetic
meditations in prose. So as not to wound him, I have promised to write
for him, in return for three copies with the good proofs, a text in the
style of a guide or manual, unsigned. It is, therefore, with him alone
that you will have to treat.... The thing has presented itself to my
mind very simply. On one side, an unfortunate madman, who does not know
how to conduct his affairs, and who has executed a beautiful work; on
the other, you, on whose list I want to see the best books possible. As
the journalists say, I have considered for you the double pleasure of a
good bit of business and of a good act.” And he compares Meryon’s case
with that of Daumier, then without a publisher, to wind whom up, “like
a clock,” would also, he tells Poulet-Malassis, be “a great and good
bit of business.”
This is the last reference in any of the letters to Meryon, or to the
album, for which Baudelaire never wrote his text, since no publisher
was willing to publish the work. Had Poulet-Malassis not failed in
1861, it might have appeared, and then, in spite of the restrictions
imposed upon the restive spirit of the poet, we might have had in
Baudelaire’s text some literary equivalent of Meryon’s etchings. How
sympathetic this would have been, is shown by the descriptive and
interpretative passage from the _Salon de 1859_ already quoted, which,
in a few sentences, completely defines the form of Meryon’s imaginative
genius, and reveals the inmost source of its power to stir the emotions.
There was, indeed, much that was common to the genius of Meryon and
of Baudelaire. The work of both was profoundly personal, and in both
a powerful and somber imagination was tinged with a subtle fantasy
supplied by a morbid exaggeration in the senses, which did not,
however, preclude an intense and ardent preoccupation with formal
perfection.
On the contrary, these two modern _détraqués_ present in their work a
solidity of construction and an absolute rectitude in the rendering
of their moods and dreams, that is scarcely to be found in the work
of even their best-balanced and sanest contemporaries. The art of
Baudelaire has been compared to that of Racine, and, in the same way,
Meryon’s design has the complete economy and control of Robert Nanteuil
or of Callot. Men like these make us doubt and reconsider our stock
distinctions of “romantic” and “classic.” The work of Meryon and of
Baudelaire answers equally to both descriptions, and assures them a
place apart in their generation. Thus, while their paths crossed but
for a moment, and while they never shared with each other their secret
thoughts and aspirations, there is, nevertheless, no small interest for
the student in these slight and fragmentary records of what, had it
not been for a cruel freak of fate, might have proved an enduring and
fruitful friendship.
FÉLIX BRACQUEMOND: AN ETCHER OF BIRDS
BY FRANK WEITENKAMPF
Chief of the Department of Prints, New York Public Library
Even the artist of various interests actively expressed,--the
versatile artist, if that adjective be used without the suspicion of
superficiality which is often its aftertaste--is very apt to become
associated in the public mind with some one specialty.
Félix Bracquemond is known particularly well as an etcher of birds. Yet
he has done many things, more than one well enough to have established
a reputation. At twenty he painted, and exhibited at the Salon of 1853,
a portrait of himself, in a manner that carries you back to Holbein,
that even faintly suggests the spirit of Van Eyck in its precise and
detailed utterance. The portrait clearly indicates his future activity,
for he holds in his hand a bottle of acid, while etching tools lie on
a table near him. His etched portraits are numerous, and include such
comparatively free productions as the ones of Legros and of Meryon, and
the large, minutely finished one of Edmond de Goncourt. The last named
is a characteristic and typical example of Bracquemond’s art, which,
even when most painstaking, somehow or other never seems labored.
Bracquemond appears as a peculiar and interesting mingling of
Teutonic thoroughness and Gallic _esprit_.
[Illustration: BRACQUEMOND. DUCKS AT PLAY
Size of the original etching, 12¾ × 9⅜ inches]
[Illustration: BRACQUEMOND. A FLOCK OF TEAL ALIGHTING
Size of the original etching, 12 × 9⅝ inches]
The characteristic elements in his portraits--“robustness, versatility
and a resourceful mastery of technique”--are peculiar to all his
work. The same artist who carefully and with honest and sympathetic
adaptation translated such different products of painter’s personality
as Millet’s _Man with the Hoe_ and Meissonier’s _La Rixe_, as well as
canvases and drawings by Holbein (the magisterial portrait of Erasmus),
Corot, Gustave Moreau, Gavarni and Delacroix, also, under Japanese
influence, etched numerous designs for ceramic ware (he was for a time
a sort of artist director at the Haviland factory at Limoges), fishes
and birds in swirling, decorative outline. In contrast to these last
named are his numerous well-finished pictures of birds and mammals. His
hares, moles and mice done with loving emphasis on the texture of their
furry pelts. (The vision of happy days, seen by poor bunny suspended
by one leg, was reproduced as far afield as Poland, in _Tygódnik
Illustrowány_.) The birds, with the delightful and strong modeling of
their bodies felt under the sleek surface of their feathery coverings.
A master craftsman, he has found delight, like Buhot, Guérard and
Mielatz, in technical experiments, and his interest and skill in
reproductive methods are illustrated in etchings, dry-points,
aquatints, lithographs, photogravures retouched with etching,
engravings in color, and plates showing combinations of processes.
Burty once wrote: “He contrives by repeated use of the acid on certain
parts of the plate to get a black which for depth and intensity has
never been equaled.” And Meryon avowed of him: “I cannot etch. That
one, there, he is the true etcher.”
His active interests, and his all-embracing outlook on the life about
him, found expression in such occasional productions as the etchings
of figures modeled in snow by French sculptors in Paris during the
Commune; the symbolical lithograph of France defending himself against
the Prussian eagle, while strangling his own imperial bird; the ceramic
compliment to Uncle Sam: _The Old World and Young America_, or the
very large plate done as a memorial tablet for Meryon’s coffin. His
hand recorded the placid, rural beauties of Bas Meudon and the quick
impression of a steamboat, amusingly described by Beraldi (see No.
185). And a bit of woodland, possibly in the Bois de Boulogne, in
winter snows, in combination with a gaunt wolf probably studied at the
Jardin d’Acclimatation (the Paris “Zoo”), gave him opportunity for his
effective _Wolf in the Snow_, also known as _Winter_ (Beraldi No. 180),
which in its spirit of desolation might be many hundred miles from
Paris.
And with all this, his etchings only have been spoken of here,--and
they are about 800 in number. But the catalogue (issued in an edition
of 220 copies) of his work exhibited at the Société Nationale des
Beaux-Arts (Salon) in 1907, includes not only etchings, but paintings,
water-colors, pastels and designs executed in embroidered silk,
ceramics, iron, cloisonné enamel, jade, wood and bookbindings.
[Illustration: BRACQUEMOND. PHEASANTS AT DAWN: MORNING MISTS
Size of the original etching, 9 × 13⅜ inches]
[Illustration: BRACQUEMOND. THE BATHER (CANARDS SURPRIS)
Size of the original etching, 14 × 10½ inches]
Yet the late Walter S. Carter of Brooklyn, a most catholic
print-collector, ventured fearlessly on the inviting but not
always safe sliding pond of analogy, and proclaimed Bracquemond the
“Michelangelo of ducks.” Without regard to the manner of the statement,
we may accept the classification. For had Bracquemond never etched
anything but his bird plates, he would have won his place in the annals
of the fascinating art of needle and acid. Perhaps he realized that
when he furnished a title-page design for the third volume, devoted
to himself, of Beraldi’s “Graveurs du XIXᵉ Siècle,” consisting solely
of a duck and a portfolio of prints. Much slighter in execution, but
more significantly allegorical, was his frontispiece (Beraldi No.
480) for the catalogue of the second portion of the Burty collection.
It represented a stand holding an open portfolio from which prints
flying upward are gradually evolved into cranes. Ducks, however, have
apparently been his special delight. He has pictured them in action,
as in the delightful oblong picture of two ducks swimming (Beraldi
No. 185) and in the equally, and amusingly, lifelike one of five
ducks swimming hurriedly to a central point of common interest. Or
in allegorical attitude, as in the _Canard_ (Beraldi No. 116), the
herald of “fake” news. He has observed the teal along the riverside
and the _Gambols_ of ducks (Beraldi No. 221), done with a simple and
sympathetic delight in the doings of these water-fowl. Hardly ever,
perhaps, has he better characterized the useful bird whose call,
onomatopoetically imitated, has long served to characterize medical
charlatanry, than in the plate known as _The Bather_ or _Canards
surpris_. The three birds, who have come down to their accustomed
swimming hole only to find it already occupied by a comely young
woman, are alive and moving. The beholder can fairly see and hear
their wonder at the unwarranted intrusion on their rights, and regards
their wagging tails with much of the fascination that Septimus and
Wiggleswick (in W. J. Locke’s “Septimus”) felt in the same diversion.
While the duck apparently appealed most to him, Bracquemond was
attracted also by other members of the family of _Aves_. The goose,
cousin to the _Anas_, he showed collectively in _Geese in a Storm_
(_The Storm Cloud._ Beraldi No. 219), which may be studied in the Avery
collection at the New York Public Library, in a series of touched
proofs in which the fortuitous effect of gradually added work in the
sky gives somewhat the impression of a storm rising as you look at the
consecutive proofs. _Ducks in a Marsh_ also move under a lowering sky,
and in _It’s Raining Pitchforks_ (Beraldi No. 212) the flood-gates
of heaven are fully opened, so that the water-fowl appear to find
themselves doubly in their element.
[Illustration: BRACQUEMOND. GEESE IN A STORM
Size of the original etching, 9½ × 13⅜ inches]
[Illustration: BRACQUEMOND. SEA-GULLS
Size of the original etching, 10¾ × 18 inches]
Bracquemond sometimes labored through a number of states on a plate.
The large portrait of Edmond de Goncourt was patiently carried through
a number of progressive proofs. And in the process of thus searching
for ultimate satisfactoriness he may give us such pleasant surprises
as the fourth state of _Morning Mists_ (Beraldi No. 779), a pheasant
piece, with its delightful background addition of trees--an airy,
light impression of early morning. He has done several landscapes
of a lightness which approaches a Legros-like delicacy, so that it
is perplexing to compare them with such a faithfully studied but
somewhat hard plate as that of the duck perplexed at sight of a
turtle (_L’Inconnu_, Beraldi No. 174), and to realize that the same
hand did both. Venturing still farther into the field of ornithology,
he depicted golden pheasants, partridges, swallows, with sympathy for
his subject and an open eye for its artistic possibilities. The human
element enters into these pictures very rarely, and then only when
absolutely in place. So in _At the Jardin d’Acclimatation_ (Beraldi No.
214), in which two stylishly dressed young ladies are looking at golden
pheasants in an inclosure. Once, at least, in _Sea-gulls_ (Beraldi No.
782), he felt and rendered the beautiful effect of a circling, gliding
flight of gulls over rolling waves, in a graceful swirl of lines
combining into a harmonious pattern.
The peculiar effect of this last named plate, with its mingling of
Japanese and other influences, is in striking contrast to his early and
most remarkable _Haut d’un battant de Porte_ (Beraldi No. 110, done at
the age of nineteen), in which the dead bodies of three birds of prey
and a bat are shown nailed to a barn door, held up as a warning example
in a not too smoothly flowing quatrain. To his plates of moralizing or
emblematic intention, such as the one just referred to, or the _Canard_
(Beraldi No. 116), he delighted in adding such inscriptions, generally
in rhyme. His verses in such cases partake a little of the halting
metre of those which poor Meryon attached to certain of his plates.
Such etched letterpress additions appear also in _Margot la Critique_
(Beraldi No. 113) and in _Le Corbeau_. The last named delineation of
an old bow-legged crow presents a creature so weird, so uncanny, that
without adventitious effects it appears as a symbol of some sinister
power, felt though not realized. But a still more famous plate,
because most strongly characteristic, is _The Old Cock_ (the original
drawing for which is owned by Samuel P. Avery), a masterly portrait of
chanticleer, in all the dignity and pomp of his mature vigor and serene
self-sufficiency. Here is the poem for this:
Hé, vieux coq,
Vieux Don Juan,
Vieille voix, tu t’érailles,
Toi-même tu seras
La pierre du festin fait à tes funerailles
Et les convives, las
De livrer à ta chair de trop rudes batailles
Se reposeront des dents et des bras
Racontant à l’envie, tes amours, tes combats.
He japonized this magnificent fowl in a purely decorative spirit,
without the psychological element. And on the occasion of the visit
of the Russian fleet to Toulon in 1893, he repeated and emphasized
the theme to the verge almost of the grotesque, in a representation
of the Gallic cock, a Hercules of his kind, with the aggressiveness
of conscious strength, trumpeting forth his _Vive le Tsar!_ with
triumphant enthusiasm. This emblematic use of ornithological specimens
has been already referred to in the case of the _Canard_. It appears
notably also in _Margot la Critique_. The critic may note that _Margot_
happens to be particularly unctuous in the state before the verses, but
will not be otherwise adversely influenced by this etched philippic
against his brethren.
[Illustration: BRACQUEMOND. THE OLD COCK
“But a still more famous plate, because most strongly characteristic,
is _The Old Cock_, a masterly portrait of chanticleer, in all the
dignity and pomp of his mature vigor and serene self-sufficiency.”
Frank Weitenkampf, _Félix Bracquemond: An Etcher of Birds_.
Size of the original etching, 11¼ × 9⅞ inches]
[Illustration: BRACQUEMOND. SWALLOWS IN FLIGHT
Size of the original etching, 12½ × 10½ inches]
But besides these many realistic studies of bird life there are just
about as many of purely decorative interest, showing strong Japanese
influence, and mostly executed for ceramic decoration. There are also
decorative combinations of _Reeds and Teal_, _Swallows_ flying in
graceful curves and swirls, _Lapwing and Teal_ swimming and flying.
Here again we have an entirely different point of view. The loving
study of nature, sometimes expressed in an uncompromising hardness in
the reproduction of form or detail, or elsewhere in an almost playful
lightness of touch in obedience to a passing mood, appears here with
quite different results. Seemingly endless changes on the same theme
of swirling, undulating curves of flying, running, strutting, swimming
bodies of birds and fishes delight the eye with the rhythmic flow of
ever recurrent accent on the pure beauty of line.
And at the end, when you have gone through the many portfolios of
Bracquemond’s work, there occurs to you his own statement quoted by
Clement Janin. It is to the effect that a work of graphic art must bear
on its face, undisguised, the characteristics of the technique by which
it was produced. A lithograph must be a lithograph; a wood-engraving a
wood-engraving and not the imitation of an engraving on copper or of a
photograph. A review of the arts of reproduction proves that this is
not the truism it may seem. It is a basic principle in all art, and
will bear earnest and repeated emphasis. And the notable recognition of
this fact by Bracquemond is a prime factor in his success in the art
that has meant so much to him.
AUGUSTE LEPÈRE
BY ELISABETH LUTHER CARY
Art Editor of the New York Times
IT is the fashion of the moment to specialize in art as in other
professions, and we no longer expect to find the multiple tendencies
and ambitions of a Leonardo or a Dürer, or even of the self-contained
Rembrandt, in the modern artist. He is a painter or a sculptor or a
wood-engraver or an etcher. He is even more closely classified as
a portrait- or a landscape-painter, an animalier or a decorator, a
dry-point engraver or a disciple of pure etching. If, as sometimes
happens, he escapes from the threads of the Lilliputians and swings his
arms in a wider sweep, it is in the mood of deprecation or excuse, as a
writer may choose to whittle wood or hammer metal in order to clear his
word-fogged brain.
There is, however, a wholesome and growing impression among thoughtful
observers that extreme limitation and restriction produce weakness
rather than strength, and when we find an artist who has something
of the ancient flexibility of mind and hand it is worth our while to
acclaim him.
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL
Size of the original etching, 14⅛ × 10¾ inches]
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. BELLE MATINÉE. AUTOMNE
Size of the original etching, 7½ × 11¼ inches]
Auguste Lepère has pursued a free course of development, rounding his
capacities, and forming himself with balanced and reasonable attention
to diversified interests. He was born in Paris in 1849. His father
was the talented sculptor François Lepère, and he got, no doubt, from
his father something of the latter’s taste for suggesting passion, even
frenzy, in small but monumental figures. While quite young he studied
with the English engraver Smeeon, and spent his first professional
years in the service of illustration for _Le Monde Illustré_,
_L’Illustration_, _Le Magasin Pittoresque_, and _La Revue Illustrée_ in
Paris, the _Graphic_ and _Black and White_ in London, and _Scribner’s_
and _Harper’s_ in America.
Tiring of this field, he tried all things. He became in turn a
metal-chaser, a decorator of leathers, a ceramist, an etcher, a
wood-engraver and a painter. If we consider him chiefly as an etcher,
it must be with the full appreciation that any craft mastered by him is
made subsidiary to the larger principles upon which all works of art
are based, whatever the medium or process. He has consistently declined
to fritter away his admirable technique upon technicalities undertaken
for their own sake, and his work in etching as in painting is the work
of an intellect concerned with the problems of rhythm and harmony,
color, tone and form, which assail artists in every field.
As an etcher he received his initiation from Bracquemond, the most
robust of temperaments and at the same time the most fastidious of
technicians. Lepère has been worthy of his teaching. From the first he
has sought to render his impression, recorded by a vision singularly
prompt and synthetic, with precise care, patiently assembling all the
complex virtues of his method to the task. To his slightest plate he
has brought conscience and sincerity, and also a quality without
which all the moral gifts with which human nature may be endowed would
have availed him nothing as an artist: the rare capacity, that is, for
retaining the freshness of his vision throughout a slow process of
translation.
Before examining a few of his plates to discern their significant
qualities, it will be interesting to consider his own words on the aim
of the engraver: notes written with reference to the change in methods
of reproduction from interpretation by means of the engraver’s art to
the use of photography and the resultant processes. Even his notes on
engraving for the purpose of reproduction, though less closely allied
to the work of his riper years than the notes on engraving from nature
as an original art, are excellent reading, since they throw a clear
light upon his ideals and definite convictions:
“Formerly,” he says, “when an engraver had a work to reproduce, it
was _absolutely necessary for him to see it_. He could then study
it, comprehend it, and consequently extract its essential principle,
simplify it, adapt it to his mode of expression, engrave it.
“If he had not the gift of composition, that of design was necessary
in order to make his transposition; that of interpretation, in order
to gather the idea of the creator of his model. His work was almost
the equal of the work of an original engraver who usually interprets a
composition or a model given by nature.
“His art was that of transposition. He took color or mass and made
a song in a different key, keeping only the relative values of the
shadows and lights and the contours of the objects.
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. VUE DU PORT DE LA MEULE
Size of the original etching, 8⅝ × 12½ inches]
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. PEUPLIERS TÉTARDS
Size of the original etching, 7⅞ × 9¾ inches]
“Photography has come to change all that. It has facilitated the task
of the engraver, who, for the most part, has not even seen the works he
reproduces. The science of design is almost reduced to knowing how to
trace; as for simplifying a photograph, it can only make matters worse.
Such as it is, a photograph forms a perfect gamut in which nothing can
be changed without losing everything; to extract a line from it is
impossible, so indiscernible is the passage from one object to another,
a figure in the background, etc., etc.
“Photography is a reproduction; it becomes a betrayal. What is the copy
interpreted by this betrayal? How can one extract the character of
anything if the true model is not there?
“Here, then, is our engraver obliged to copy with his precise art
from something quite vague. Photography sees the globs of color, the
accidents of a picture, with as much interest as the most beautiful
design. What will he put in the place of these accidents? He traces, he
copies; and as the photograph is stupid, he copies a stupidity.
“He does this so thoroughly that he can be dispensed with, the means
of printing a photograph having been discovered. What imitates a
photograph most completely if not a photogravure? This attains to a
degree of impersonality so great that the poor engraver can no longer
battle against it.
“For the engraver who possesses no faculty of composition to do
artistic work it is necessary that he be an interpreter, a simplifier,
with a very well-defined idea of the necessities of his craft, and
that he know how to draw directly! He must renounce all attempts
to overstep the boundaries of his craft; he must not try to express
colors. One may, in an engraving, express cold and heat; that is,
indeed, the main thing. But it is impossible to engrave red, yellow,
or green. These are researches that encroach upon the domain of the
painter and spoil everything.”
Of the original engraver more is exacted. As a true artist he
must respect both his craft and the quality of his vision. He
must synthetize, simplify, express, avoid photographic vision and
trivialities of style; he must employ only the means forbidden to
photography: those well-affirmed indications of the movements of the
point which are the very foundation of the beautiful technique of
engraving.
And in one phrase is summed up the essential aim of the engraver
who treats his art with respect, whether he uses it for purposes of
reproduction or for original work: “Not to imitate. To express.”
Lepère has followed his own doctrine to its logical conclusion. Never
servile, even in his most faithful portraiture of a nature that
enchants him, he works with a plenitude of science, but also with
unwearied freshness of inspiration and a sympathetic feeling for the
character of his subject, whether it is a curve of the river near Nôtre
Dame where horses come down to drink, or a poor man’s hut with climbing
vines in bloom, or the wide marshes of the Vendée. With the passage
of time his vision has grown larger and calmer, his interpretations
magisterial; but in his most classic moments he does not forget
to infuse into his composition a strong feeling for this intimate
characterization. He is a true creator, living not only above but in
his conception. He is at once serene and moved, in command of his
intellectual instrument and impelled by his personal interest.
The _Journée d’Inventaire_ is a plate that shows clearly this double
action of the artist’s mind. The composition is stately in both line
and mass. In the background rises the lofty architecture of the Amiens
Cathedral; in the foreground, in deep shadow, is a group of figures
diversely occupied. The upraised arms of these figures lead naturally
to the pointed arches and ascending spires. In a similar fashion, the
strong darks of the foreground mount in diminishing quantity through
the heavy shadows in the recesses of the doorways to the luminous
blacks that mark the slender openings in the towers. It is a beautiful
upward movement that repeats the song of the Gothic spirit.
These wonderful darks have also another function. Echoed as they are,
in the small, sharp shadows of the multitudinous detail, they send the
light quivering all through the picture. It pours down from a sky empty
of clouds, and causes the web of decorative imagery with which the
structure is draped to shimmer like a fabric set with precious stones.
Only a true master of the subtleties possible to interwoven dark and
light could thus command his atmospheric effect, and evoke from his
slight and restricted materials the grandeur of the immense pile of
stone raised by the hands of man, and the contrasting evanescence of
the passing sunshine caressing every boss and hollow in the richly
manipulated surfaces. It is perhaps not too much to say that nothing
more remarkable in its kind has been done in the present century.
The element of drama is added by the turmoil of little figures in
shadow at the base of the cathedral, seen in minute detail through
the translucent darkness and agitated by their human accidents and
emotions. The whole spirit of France, its imperishable monuments, its
sparkle of sunshine, its reasonable architecture, its vivid life, may
be inferred from this remarkable plate.
Very different in sentiment and less close to perfection in the
relation of the parts of the design to the whole, is _La Chûte de
Ballon_; yet this also is a beautiful plate. As in the _Journée
d’Inventaire_, the eye is led upward by the gestures of the crowd in
the foreground to the point of interest, the balloon hung poised above
the trees and houses. There is the same contrast of movement, too, in
the agitated figures of the foreground with the calm lines and clear
light of the distance. In this plate, however, is greater piquancy of
light and shade. The abrupt lines and minor episodes are carried so far
into the composition as to dominate the general impression, leaving
the open distance to play a secondary instead of primary part. Figures
are hurrying in excitement toward the scene of the aërial drama; tree
branches are tossing, there are little restless clouds passing rapidly
across the sky; the air is brisk, it is a bright day, there is much to
see and do, and interest is keen--that is the story one carries away
from the handsome, stirring print, and also a subtle poetic suggestion
that beyond the town, as one follows the slow length of a white cliff,
to where it meets the horizon, is a very great world that turns from
night to day, from day to night, interminably, unchecked and unspeeded
by the passing storms of human glee and human woe.
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. LE MOULIN DES CHAPELLES
Size of the original etching, 4¾ × 5¾ inches]
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. A GENTILLY
Size of the original etching, 7⅝ × 9¾ inches]
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. LA CHAUMIÈRE DU VIEUX PECHEUR
Size of the original etching, 8½ × 15¼ inches]
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. LE NID
Size of the original etching, 6¼ × 6⅜ inches]
_La Seine à l’Embouchure du Canal Saint-Martin_ is more commonplace
in subject, the river and its barges having entered into the artistic
life of nearly all French etchers; but how few could pass with such
sureness of plan, such precision of execution, from the dark bulk
of the vessel in the lower left corner to the snapping black of the
tree-top in the upper right corner, along a perfect diagonal, without
a suspicion of stiffness or formalism in the fluent arrangement of
innumerable details of pattern! This strong sense of appropriate and
austere design, supported by such an easy grace of handling, is unusual
in any age, and especially in our own, when grace and austerity find it
almost impossible to live together in one man’s work.
Turning away from these subjects, in which nature presents a wide range
to the artist and inspires him to breadth and dignity of treatment, to
the quaint and touching subjects drawn from peasant life in the Vendean
homes, we find beneath the admirable form of Lepère’s expression
thoughts tender and merry and filled with sympathy for common
experience. His work becomes picturesque and living, the mood of the
observer changes in response, and the pleasure given is that inspired
by simple things, although the treatment of the given scene is often
far from simple.
While all these plates are admirably expressive, one in particular,
_Le Nid_, seems to me filled with melody, color and charm as well as
with the efficient intelligence always to be found in Lepère’s work.
A little solid house with thick walls stands in greenery. Children,
natural, happy, unconcerned, are playing in the foreground. Beyond is
a curve of low hill and a glimpse of flat plain; and still beyond,
a little town with its spire. It is all very naïve and fresh; the
outdoor setting has much beauty; the types of the children are
unhackneyed; the gestures and positions unconventional and spontaneous.
A mere glance reveals the felicity of the subject-matter, but longer
acquaintance is necessary before all the resources of the design are
appreciated. Even in this playful note of pleasant summer pastime we
get something of the gravity and serious purpose indispensable to great
etchers as to great painters. It was this characteristic that led
Lepère to pull down all the detail of the middle distance below the
noble swinging line of the hillock, in order to keep the severity of
that magnificent curve. It was this which led him to follow a repeating
curve in the arrangement and environment of the children, apparently
so carelessly disposed among their shrubs and flowers. “Let all things
play and bloom and make holiday,” he seems to exclaim in this rare
plate, “so long as the power of my design is not weakened by them.” The
artist whose work says that to us is sure of long life in our memories.
There are several of these subjects in which children at play near
their homes are the principal feature, and it would be easy to find in
each some special note of gaiety and charm and quick Gallic wit. In
_Les deux Bourrines_, for example, the groups of little ugly creatures,
who form again a curved line of beauty, are characterized with a frank
acceptance of their unclassic physiognomies that would have delighted
the heart of Daumier. _Le Nid de Pauvres_ is not less romantic in its
Gothic avoidance of the ideal type.
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. PROVINS
Size of the original etching, 6 × 11¾ inches]
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. L’EGLISE DE JOUY LE MOUTIER
Size of the original etching, 6⅜ × 6⅜ inches]
[Illustration: LEPÈRE. L’ENFANT PRODIGUE
Size of the original etching, 9½ × 12⅝ inches]
Classic Lepère can be, however, with a curiously vital appreciation
of what the living classic must have been. He has an etching of a
swineherd entering the yard in which the beasts are penned. They move,
grunting, toward him. Outside is a cluster of great trees with bushy
foliage. The light is clear and warm. The folds of the swineherd’s
mantle and his gesture are Greek. His figure might have passed across
the Athenian stage, one fancies, at the time of Sophoclean drama. And
the landscape has the deep repose immortalized in classic verse--such
songs as in his extreme old age Sophocles made to do honor to his
native village:
Our home, Colonus, gleaming fair and white:
The nightingale still haunteth all our woods,
Green with the flush of spring;
And sweet, melodious floods
Of softest song through grove and thicket ring.
Lepère is not often found in this mood, however, and the swineherd
plate cannot be considered wholly characteristic of his temper of
mind. It seems to have been one of those rare happenings when the mind
is lifted above its habitual plane, occasion serves, and the trained
hand obediently records a moment of peculiar exaltation. He is perhaps
most of all his daily self in the little plate called _Le Moulin des
Chapelles_. Here he shows us the machinery of the mill and the round
white column of the structure as others have done, but he also shows us
what others seldom do--the use of the mill. A patient horse is standing
near, a man is shifting the bags of flour to his back. It is not a mere
accident of landscape; it has a social and utilitarian function; it is
connected with human life.
This is the most characteristic attitude of mind for an artist so
alert to the significance of visible things; and it is immensely to
his credit as an artist that he almost never permits this keen and
throbbing interest in the world about him to trespass upon his logical
use of his great instrument.
If organization of line and space, ability to establish in each of his
compositions a decorative scheme adequate to support easily all the
delightful episodes and figures which he chooses to introduce, is the
most important element in Lepère’s artistic equipment, the next in
significance is the clarity and precision of his utterance. There is
no vapor in his imagination; he is a poet as well as an artist, with a
poet’s sensitiveness to definition of form. All that he lacks is the
intensity of emotion that sweeps away interest in everything but the
personal feeling. We suspect that the world for him will always be
“full of a number of things,” and that he will not be able to forget
any of them in the exaltation of profound self-absorption. But he has
a genius for infusing a rich suggestiveness into all that he observes,
and for giving his narrative an epic character.
HERMAN A. WEBSTER
BY MARTIN HARDIE
“Did you ever see a barber sharpen his razor? That’s what it
wants--the decision and the smacks.” That is one of the many quaint
remarks that old John Varley used to hurl at the pupils who came to him
for lessons in the complete art of painting in water-color. It is a
remark very appropriate to the vast quantity of etchings, mechanically
correct, but unimpassioned and uninteresting, which are produced
to-day. There are wonderfully few etchers whose work strikes a note of
imagination and individuality, and appeals by its force and directness,
its decisions and its smacks. One of that small company is Mr. Herman
A. Webster.
An artist’s life is written in his work, and the cold facts of his
biography are of little real importance. To some extent, however, they
act as a commentary upon his productions, and at the worst they serve
to satisfy the not unpardonable curiosity which impels all of us to
inquire into the age and life-history of any man whose pictures or
prints awaken our instant sympathy. So I put here a few outlines of
Mr. Webster’s career, merely the mile-stones that mark the route along
which he has proceeded. It has been a career of strenuous activity,
for the artist who now prints his finely-wrought plates in his studio
in the Rue de Furstenberg at Paris (the street of which Whistler made
a lithograph in 1894) has graduated at a famous university, traveled
round the world, spent two years in commercial life, toiled as general
reporter to a big daily paper, worked in a coal-mine, and acted as
assistant cashier in a bank. And the tale of his years is only just
over thirty, for he was born in 1878. Need I add--for an English reader
it would be quite superfluous--that Mr. Webster is an American, with
New York as his native city?
Mr. Webster came into the world with an innate love of art. In his
school-days, before he had received any instruction in drawing, he
made posters, that were perhaps crude but not ineffective, for the
school games; and at Yale he was one of the editors and a valued
illustrator of the _Yale Record_. This love of art was fostered by a
visit to the 1900 Exposition at Paris, where the _genius loci_ has a
stronger spell for the young artist than anywhere else upon earth.
Studios and restaurants of the Quartier Latin are fragrant with great
memories, still haunted by the mighty spirits of the past: Louvre and
Luxembourg are filled with the living realities that abide. Amid the
enchantment of this artistic atmosphere, with all its traditions and
associations, Mr. Webster lingered for some months, and then set out
on a trans-Siberian tour to the Orient, staying long enough in Japan
and China for his natural instinct to be quickened by the marvelous
art which has exerted so strong an influence on the Western world.
On returning home his desire to adopt art as his life-calling was
checked by family opposition. Here in England--for I write as one of
Mr. Webster’s English admirers--many a boy artist has been thwarted
by a foolish antipathy in the home circle to art in the abstract, but
for a parent in the New World the conviction must be even more sincere
that business is the only lucrative profession, while art is at least
something precarious, if not a downward road to poverty and starvation.
And so, at his father’s wish, Mr. Webster, in the office of the
_Chicago Record-Herald_ and elsewhere, served two years of bondage to
commerce. Determination, however, won its way at last, and in February,
1904, he set out to Paris with the family consent to “try it for a
year.” That year is still continuing.
[Illustration: WEBSTER. ST. OUEN, ROUEN
“His chief delight is in the nooks and corners of old-world
thoroughfares and culs-de-sac, where deep shadows lurk in the angles of
time-worn buildings, and sunlight ripples over crumbling walls, seamy
gables, and irregular tiled roofs.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 5½ × 3⅞ inches]
[Illustration: WEBSTER. LA RUE GRENIER SUR L’EAU, PARIS
“A fourth plate, perhaps even finer than any of these in its force,
directness, and concentrated simplicity, is the _Rue Grenier sur
l’Eau_. There is much of Meryon in its clear, crisp line-work.” Martin
Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 8¾ × 4⅞ inches]
Seven months during 1904 were spent at the Académie Julien under Jean
Paul Laurens, in study from the nude; and that is the only academic
instruction which Mr. Webster has received. A few months after his
arrival in Paris, chance led him to the Bibliothèque Nationale, where
he saw some of Meryon’s etchings, and fell instantly under the spell of
the great artist whose sinister needle first revealed the mysterious
and somber poetry of Paris and the Seine. From Meryon and from books
he forthwith taught himself to etch, receiving no outside instruction,
but evolving his own methods till he attained mastery of the “teasing,
temper-trying, yet fascinating art”--a mastery the more valuable and
complete in that it was based on his own experience. A first attempt
was made from his studio window in the Rue de Furstenberg, and some
copperplates went with him on his autumn holiday at Grez, that “pretty
and very melancholy village” in the Forest of Fontainebleau, where
Robert Louis Stevenson met the romance of his life. As the first-fruits
of this holiday three little etchings won their way into the next
summer’s Salon--the _Rue de l’Abbaye_, _The Loing at Grez_, and _The
Court, Bourron_, the last being the forerunner of several subjects of
similar type. At the Salon also was hung a large oil-painting of still
life, a study of fabrics and porcelain; but though color will no doubt
claim allegiance again, Mr. Webster has been too closely held in thrall
by etching to essay further experiments in the painter’s craft.
A pilgrimage to Spain in the spring of 1905 was the source of several
spontaneous and effective plates, among them _St. Martin’s Bridge,
Toledo_, and _Mirada de las Reinas, Alhambra_. Up to this point Mr.
Webster’s work may be considered, in a large measure, tentative and
experimental, but from 1906 onward he has found in Normandy--at Pont de
l’Arche and Rouen--at Bruges, and above all in Paris, the inspiration
for a series of plates noteworthy for their fine craftsmanship and
their expression of individuality. They have won him the recognition
of connoisseurs and public without his passing through any period
of undeserved obscurity. At the Paris Salon, at the Royal Academy,
and in his native land, his etchings have constantly been exhibited
and admired. Nor must I forget to add that in 1908 he was elected an
Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, which, under the
presidency of its veteran founder, Sir Francis Seymour Haden, has done
so much to foster the revived art of etching.
[Illustration: WEBSTER. QUAI MONTEBELLO
“Few etchers have ever preached the gospel of light with more truth
and earnestness than Webster himself in the _Quai Montebello_ and many
other plates.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 7⅞ × 5⅛ inches]
[Illustration: WEBSTER. LE PONT NEUF, PARIS
“A fitting companion to this vision of Notre Dame is _Le Pont Neuf_,
another of the etcher’s largest and most distinguished plates. The
stern solidity of the bridge, with its massive masonry, its corbeled
turrets, and its deeply shadowed arches, makes pleasing contrast with
the irregular sky-line of the sunlit houses that rise beyond.” Martin
Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 8⅛ × 11¾ inches]
It is of some of the chief works produced and exhibited during the
last three years that I have now to speak, and in doing so may perhaps
indicate a few leading characteristics of the etcher’s work. His chief
delight is in the nooks and corners of old-world thoroughfares
and culs-de-sac, where deep shadows lurk in the angles of time-worn
buildings, and sunlight ripples over crumbling walls, seamy gables,
and irregular tiled roofs. Of such is a series of subjects found in
old Rouen--the _St. Ouen_; the _Rue du Hallage_, where the cathedral
spire towers high above old timbered houses; and that charming plate
with the title _Old Houses, Rouen_, a quaint corner of tenements
whose high-pitched roofs stand propped against one another for all
the world like a castle of cards. The etcher of this and of the _St.
Ouen_ was welcomed with warm sympathy by the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_,
which said that “never before has there been so fervent and skilled
an interpreter of the bowed timber and crumbling plaster of the old
houses of Rouen, which line the street ending in the cathedral with its
pointed spire against the open sky.” And so we pass to two courtyard
scenes--belonging, like the Rouen subjects, to the year 1906--the
_Cour, Normandie_, and _Les Blanchisseuses_. In both we find the artist
becoming more adept in using broad and balanced disposition of light
and shade to give not merely chiaroscuro but the suggestion of actual
color, and more skilled in adding exquisiteness of detail to refined
truth of visual impression. _Les Blanchisseuses_, in particular, with
its rich mystery of shadow, with its sunshine falling on white walls
and lighting the seamed interstices of plaster and timber, has an
indefinable charm that, for myself at any rate, makes it a high-water
mark in Mr. Webster’s art. Of similar type is the _Old Butter Market,
Bruges_, where a cobbled street curves beneath a shadowed archway; and
then for variety you step from _Bruges la Morte_, from the silent
cobbles that centuries ago were a busy thoroughfare for ringing feet,
to the Bruges of to-day. It is Bruges in a very different aspect, this
free and spirited study made on July 27, 1907, on the day of the Fête
de l’Arbre d’Or, giving a quick impression of gay holiday crowds, of
banners fluttering against the open sky, and of the “belfry old and
brown” whose carillon inspired America’s poet, as its tall form and
fretted outline have inspired the American etcher of whom I write. This
_Bruges en Fête_, and _Paysanne_, a clever and direct figure-study of
an old peasant at Marlotte, come as an episode of pleasing variety
in Mr. Webster’s work, and tend to show that, though he has his
preferences, he is not really fettered by any limitation of subject or
treatment.
[Illustration: WEBSTER. LA RUE CARDINALE
“_La Rue Cardinale_ has affinity of general treatment with _Rue de la
Parcheminerie_, and is not the less interesting for an amazing _tour de
force_ in the rendering of color and texture in the striped blind over
a shop-front.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 10⅞ × 7⅝ inches]
[Illustration: WEBSTER. LA RUE DE LA PARCHEMINERIE, PARIS
“Closely akin to _Rue Brise Miche_ in restful balance of composition
and in fine shadow effect is the _Rue de la Parcheminerie_--of special
value now, for the old street has disappeared largely since the making
of the plate.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 11⅛ × 7 inches]
It is but natural that an artist of Mr. Webster’s temperament, a
devoted admirer of Meryon, should become absorbed in Paris herself and
endeavor to put upon copperplate the “poésie profonde et compliqué
d’une vaste capitale.” The Bruges and Rouen plates showed Mr. Webster
to be keenly susceptible to the magnetism and charm of medieval
tradition, but Paris, steeped in sentiment even more than Rouen or
Bruges, was to rouse a still greater warmth and feeling. He began by
searching out those picturesque streets in the old quarters that have
survived the wholesale demolishment of Baron Haussmann, a name hated by
artists as that of Granger by lovers of books. The _Rue Brise Miche_
found its way to the Royal Academy, and was also honored by publication
in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ (July, 1907). Closely akin to it in
restful balance of composition and in fine shadow effect is the _Rue
de la Parcheminerie_--of special value now, for the old street has
disappeared largely since the making of the plate. _La Rue Cardinale_
has affinity of general treatment, and is not the less interesting
for an amazing _tour de force_ in the rendering of color and texture
in the striped blind over a shop-front. A fourth plate, perhaps even
finer than any of these in its force, directness, and concentrated
simplicity, is the _Rue Grenier sur l’Eau_. There is much of Meryon
in its clear, crisp line-work. Some day perhaps these loving studies
of the old Paris of Balzac may be gathered in a series illustrating
the “Quartier Marais,” and published in an _édition de luxe_ with
descriptive text by the etcher. Let us hope that this may come to pass,
for the buildings that Mr. Webster depicts are far more than a prosaic
record of architectural features. There is a spiritual and human
suggestiveness behind the mortar and bricks of his pictures: as a poet
of his own nation has it, they are “latent with unseen existences.” He
has appreciated the fact that etching--an art hedged in by limitations
and depending upon power of suggestion--is the one art that can give at
once those delicate lines, those broad shadows, those crumbling bits of
texture. The lover of etching can regard his subject with indifference,
and take full joy in the soft play of sunlight, the fine choice of
line, the effective massing of light and shade.
Another plate of this “Quartier Marais” series is a noble
representation of Notre Dame seen from an unusual aspect. It is a
drawing from near the Hôtel de Ville and shows the splendid mass of
the cathedral rising above the irregular houses that face the Quartier
Marais and the Quai aux Fleurs. There is freedom and charm in the
treatment of the foreground, where a little tug puffs along the river
and the big barges move cumbrously under the lee of the near bank, and
in the middle distance where the light plays pleasantly over the old
houses; but the roof of the cathedral itself, put in with unpleasing
rigidity of line, comes like cold fact in the middle of romance. It is
as though Meryon here had imposed his weakness as well as his strength
upon Mr. Webster, for in the _Morgue_, for instance, the one small
blemish is the ruled precision of the lines upon a roof. A fitting
companion to this vision of Notre Dame is _Le Pont Neuf_, another of
the etcher’s largest and most distinguished plates. The stern solidity
of the bridge, with its massive masonry, its corbeled turrets, and its
deeply shadowed arches, makes pleasing contrast with the irregular
sky-line of the sunlit houses that rise beyond.
It may be said of all Mr. Webster’s etchings--and perhaps there could
be no higher praise--that each possesses the faculty of provoking fresh
interest. That is certainly the case with four of his most recent
plates. One is an interior of _St. Saturnin, Toulouse_, majestic and
stately, full of suggestive mystery in the religious light that falls
with soft touch upon the pillars, throws into relief the dark masses
of the choir-stalls, and strives to penetrate the dim recesses of
the vaulted roof. _St. Saturnin_ will be among the rariora of the
collector, for the plate unfortunately broke when twelve proofs only
had been printed.
The artist’s subtle perception of light and his refined draughtsmanship
have been used to singular advantage in the _Ancienne Faculté de
Médecine, 1608_. One is grateful to him for his fine record of this
domed building that was a little gem of Renaissance art, though
there is a note of sadness in the substructure of balks and struts set
at its base by the ruthless hand of the destroyer.
[Illustration: WEBSTER. “ST. SATURNIN, TOULOUSE”
Size of the original etching, 10⅛ × 4¾ inches]
[Illustration: WEBSTER. ANCIENNE FACULTÉ DE MÉDECINE, PARIS
“The artist’s subtle perception of light and his refined draftsmanship
have been used to singular advantage in the _Ancienne Faculté de
Médecine, 1608_. One is grateful to him for his fine record of this
domed building that was a little gem of Renaissance art, though there
is a note of sadness in the substructure of balks and struts set at its
base by the ruthless hand of the destroyer.”
Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 11⅞ × 7⅞ inches]
Gothic canopies and tracery are drawn with loving care in the _Porte
des Marmousets, St. Ouen, Rouen_, but here again it is the mystery of
shadow in the deep porch that supplies the true theme. A church porch
has also supplied the subject of one of Mr. Webster’s latest works,
_Notre Dame des Andelys_. The ordinary observer will delight in the
print for its beautiful rendering of a noble fragment of architecture.
Those who have real knowledge of etching will appreciate it still more
for its clever biting and for its subtle delicacy of line so cunningly
used for the indication of stone, glass, and woodwork with their
different surfaces and textures.
That plate of _Notre Dame des Andelys_, though not the most instantly
engaging, is perhaps the most accomplished which the artist has
produced. It is in this accomplishment that from the coldly critical
point of view I see an indication--a hint only--of possible danger.
Here, and to some extent in the _Pont Neuf_ and the _Rue Grenier_,
the careful, tense, concentrated work shows almost too disciplined a
self-control. Close study of these prints gives just a touch of the
irritation that comes from watching the monotonous perfection of a
first-class game-shot or golfer, bringing a malicious desire for some
mistake or piece of recklessness. The true etching always appeals in
some degree by its spice of adventure, by some happiness of accident,
and so while the _Pont Neuf_ and the _Notre Dame des Andelys_ rouse
full admiration and respect for their splendid artistry, the more
haphazard methods of the _Rue Brise Miche_ and _Les Blanchisseuses_
touch a far deeper note of sympathy. They have in them the breezy,
natural oratory that is often so much more stirring than the fluent,
polished periods of the accomplished speaker. But even where Mr.
Webster is most precise in his articulation, most resolute in his
adherence to familiar truths, he always combines with this a personal
aspect and a power of selection that, disregarding the commonplace and
petty, lends poetry to the interpretation. His “careful” work is very
far removed from the cold and careful work of the ordinary uninspired
craftsman.
In studying the work of a young etcher--and Mr. Webster is still young
as an etcher--it is almost always possible to trace certain influences
which, quite legitimately, have acted upon his choice of subject and
his technique. In one of his first etchings, _The Court, Bourron_, the
Whistler influence is frankly apparent. _Les Blanchisseuses_ is in no
sense an imitative plate, but I should have said it was the work of a
man who knew Whistler’s _Unsafe Tenement_ by heart. And there comes in
the critic’s danger of leaping to rash conclusions, for Mr. Webster
tells me he never saw that print by Whistler till long after his
etching was made. For the Meryon influence, which is clearly apparent
in much of his work, Mr. Webster makes no apology. Nor need he do
so; for if he reminds us, here a little of Whistler, there a little
of Meryon, there is always a large measure of himself besides. The
true artist lights his torch from that of his predecessors: it is his
business to carry on great traditions. “I have done my best simply to
learn from him, not to steal”--that is Mr. Webster’s own expressive
way of putting it.
[Illustration: WEBSTER. NOTRE DAME DES ANDELYS
“The ordinary observer will delight in _Notre Dame des Andelys_ for its
beautiful rendering of a noble fragment of architecture. Those who have
real knowledge of etching will appreciate it still more for its clever
biting and for its subtle delicacy of line so cunningly used for the
indication of stone, glass, and woodwork with their different surfaces
and textures.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 11 × 7⅛ inches]
[Illustration: WEBSTER. PORTE DES MARMOUSETS, ST. OUEN, ROUEN
“Gothic canopies and tracery are drawn with loving care in the _Porte
des Marmousets, St. Ouen, Rouen_, but here again it is the mystery of
shadow in the deep porch that supplies the true theme.”
Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 10⅛ × 7 inches]
Mr. Webster has not learned from Meryon at the cost of his own
individuality, and one reason for the freshness that characterizes
his work is that he is one of those who like to transfer their first
impressions of nature direct to the plate in the open air. With very
few exceptions, that is how his etchings have been made. A certain
amount of work is necessarily done afterward in the retirement of the
studio, but the straightforward method of rendering nature gives a
vividness and spontaneity that careful work from intermediate studies
in pencil or color can rarely produce. This spontaneity is the very
essence of good etching, for with etching, as with water-color, its
highest charm is inevitably troubled by mechanical labor; it is
essentially a method of which one feels that “if ’twere done, ’twere
well done quickly.” The etcher should no more be able to stay the quick
gliding of his needle in the middle of a line than the skater to stand
still upon the outside edge. And I think that the etcher who works
straight from nature is more apt to search out the notes and accents
of character and to seize upon those structural lines which are a
fundamental necessity to his work.
Another chief excellence in Mr. Webster’s work lies in the fact that
from the first he has been his own printer. He is no believer in the
principle followed by many other etchers of biting their plate and
leaving it to some one “with the palm of a duchess” to do the rest.
Patient acquisition of craftsmanship is bound to tell, for the paid
printer, be he never so skilled, cannot hope to understand an artist’s
intentions quite so well as the artist himself. Mr. Webster, however,
has no need of any artifice; there is no trace in his etchings of the
meretricious printing which Whistler condemned as “treacly.” Light and
shade enter into charming alliance in his prints, but line is always
of the confederacy, and it is to purity of line that the shadows which
tell so strongly owe their strength. In the very depths of them there
is always a luminous gloom, never a trace of the harshness and opacity
that come from slurred workmanship and reliance upon printer’s ink.
Perhaps I have said too much already, for Mr. Webster’s work is well
able to speak for itself. But there is one noteworthy feature, common
to all his plates, that claims attention, and that is his power of
rendering sunlight. If he loves dark and dingy thoroughfares with
dilapidated roofs and moldering plaster, it is for the sake of those
quaint shadows that peep from their recesses and climb the high walls,
and still more for the patches of brilliant, quivering sunlight to
which the shadows give so full a value. He seems to hear, like Corot,
the actual crash of the sun upon the wall--“l’éclat du soleil qui
frappe.”
PART II
It is difficult to clothe one’s speech in the detached terms of a
catalogue when writing of an artist whose work always kindles fresh
enthusiasm. And so I may perhaps be pardoned if, in adding something to
a previous essay upon the etchings of Herman A. Webster, I venture to
strike a more personal note.
[Illustration: WEBSTER. VIEILLES MAISONS, RUE HAUTEFEUILLE, PARIS
“He loves dark and dingy thoroughfares with dilapidated roofs and
moldering plaster, ... for the patches of brilliant, quivering sunlight
to which the shadows give so full a value.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 11¼ × 5⅞ inches]
[Illustration: WEBSTER. LA ROUTE DE LOUVIERS
“In landscape, as in his architectural work, Webster sets his theme
upon the plate with fine skill of arrangement and with exquisite
draughtsmanship.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 6 × 8¼ inches]
There can be few men to whom art is more of a religion than to Webster.
On two occasions when I saw him during his hurried visits to London
in the spring of 1910, he spoke of his art with all the zeal of a
missionary and the fervor of a convert. He seemed to be laboring in
a slough of despond, beset with a feeling that his past work was
something worthless, to be thrown aside like Christian’s bundle. He
appeared to be torn in sunder by divers doctrines, telling me of the
constant ebb and flow of argument in the Paris cafés and studios
between the _parti métier_ and the _parti âme_--those who maintained
that finished technique, the “_cuisine_” of the French student, was
the final aim, and those who held that the artist’s own emotion,
howsoever it might find expression, was the greatest thing of all.
Webster felt--and it was a fact, indeed, at which I hinted in writing
of his work before--that he was sacrificing something of the _âme_
to the _métier_; and his own realization of that is already becoming
apparent in his outlook and his style. Then, too, his talk was all of
the attainment and suggestion of light as the supreme quality in an
etching; and here I could reassure him, for few have ever preached the
gospel of light with more truth and earnestness than Webster himself in
the _Quai Montebello_ and many other plates.
Still, there matters stood more than a year ago, and the plates that
Webster had etched at Marseilles and elsewhere lay rejected and
unbitten in his studio. Then he set out to America, where he spent
the summer of 1910, and, like Mr. Pennell, fell a victim to the
sky-scrapers of New York. “They are the most marvelous things,” he
wrote, “on the face of Mother Earth to-day. It took me two months to
begin to see them, but then they began to glow, to take shape, and to
grow. Perhaps no work of human hands in all the world offers such a
stupendous picture as New York seen from almost anywhere within the
down-town district, or from the river or the bay. There are cliffs and
cañons where sun and shadow work the weirdest miracles, and soaring
above them, between forty and fifty stories from the ground, rise
arched roofs and pointed ones, gray and gold and brown, that one must
see with one’s own eyes to have the faintest conception of. From across
the Hudson in the afternoon when the sun goes down you can watch the
shadows creep up the sides of these mountains of brick and stone until
you’d swear you were looking out on some gigantic fairyland.”
His admiration of those sky-scrapers found expression in a series of
drawings made on behalf of _The Century Magazine_, and in, at any
rate, one etching--the _Cortlandt Street, New York_. The subject will
appeal most, perhaps, to those who live beneath the familiar shade
of these monstrous habitations, with their hundreds of staring eyes;
but the ordinary man, though he may find it strangely uninspiring
and unromantic, will at any rate admire the firm decision of the
drawing and welcome the slender filaments and trembling gray spirals
of smoke--so difficult to express in line with a point of steel--that
cast a veil over the sordid reality of the scene. Though Webster
carried that one plate to a finish, he was still obsessed by all sorts
of doubts. Many drawings were torn up, and many plates that he etched
were wilfully destroyed. Just as the golfer falls victim to too much
reading of theoretical works, so for Webster his eager indulgence in
theory and science put him “off his game.” I say all this to account
for what must seem a small output during two years for a man whose
sole work is etching. It is all to the artist’s credit; but, none
the less, we have suffered, _nous autres_, for his convictions. Now,
however, Richard is himself again. A month or more spent in Frankfort
this summer has produced a series of pencil-drawings and etchings which
should bring satisfaction and content both to the artist and to all who
admire his work.
[Illustration: WEBSTER. BENDERGASSE, FRANKFORT
“Then there are the _Street of the Three Kings_, the _Bendergasse_, and
_Sixteenth Century Houses_, all of them felicitous in charm of theme,
in play of light and shade, and in the suggestion of life given by the
animated figures.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 8 × 5¼ inches]
[Illustration: WEBSTER. CORTLANDT STREET
Size of the original etching, 12⅞ × 7½ inches]
Before speaking of the Frankfort series of etchings, a word may be
said about Webster’s pencil-drawings. I know of no other artist, save
perhaps Mr. Muirhead Bone, who can use the pencil-point with such
exquisite fineness and precision in the production of an architectural
drawing that, with all its accuracy, still retains the freshness of
a sketch. Finding in a portfolio a drawing of _Cortlandt Street_ and
several others that repeated the subjects of the Frankfort etchings,
I felt curious as to the exact relationship between these drawings
and the work on the copperplate. This interest was largely, perhaps,
that of a fellow-etcher, keen to see “how the wheels go round,” but
Webster’s reply to a question on this subject may interest others as
well. “I determine my composition,” he wrote, “in outline first. This
outline I transfer to the plate. Then I go out and carefully study
in pencil, on the original outline sketch, the subject I want to do,
so as to ‘get acquainted’ with it before beginning the more exacting
work upon the copperplate. I never use a drawing to work from except
sometimes as an extra guide in the biting, where a careful study can
be very useful.” They are beautiful things, these pencil-drawings
of New York and Frankfort, but there can be only one of each. The
etchings, fortunately, can be shared and enjoyed by many possessors.
Frankfort has grown to be a large and very modern town with broad
thoroughfares and palatial buildings; but it has its old quarter
as well, and among the houses that nestle in narrow streets round
the cathedral, Webster has found the same kind of subject that
fascinated him before in Bruges and Marseilles and Paris. A brilliant
draughtsman, he never seems to hesitate or lose his way among the
manifold intricacies of the old-world buildings that he depicts. He
aims always at knitting his subjects into fine unity of composition
by broad massing of light and shade. “In the last few months,” he
writes, “I have grown never to make an etching for etching’s sake, but
for the means it gives of studying closely the play of light across
my subject.” That is his main theme: the light that travels now with
cold curiosity as it did centuries ago, glancing into open windows,
throwing into relief a corbel or a crocket, casting a shadow under eave
or window ledge, revealing, like a patch in some tattered garment, the
cracks and seams in moldering plaster or time-worn timber. In depicting
these storehouses of human joys and aspirations, hopes and despairs,
he has none of Meryon’s gloom and morbidness. It is true that behind
many of the windows in these poor homes of his pictures some Marie
Claire may be toiling in sad-eyed poverty; yet for Webster the outside
shall be sunny, little white curtains shall veil the gloom, and flowers
shall blossom on the window ledge, though the sad worker may have
watered them with her tears. And if sunshine is still potent in these
new plates, there is also a fresh and joyous note of life and movement
in the streets. The introduction of figures, well placed and full of
character, is a new development in Webster’s art. Bustling workers, or
happy groups of gossiping women, or the dark mass of a distant crowd,
are introduced with consummate skill, and the picturesqueness of the
old streets gains new value from the suggestion of this living stream
of human traffic. The presence of modern life enhances the gray and
wrinkled age of the buildings which have watched so many generations
come and go.
[Illustration: WEBSTER. LOWENPLÄTZCHEN, FRANKFORT
Size of the original etching, 8 × 6⁵⁄₁₆ inches]
[Illustration: WEBSTER. DER LANGER FRANZ, FRANKFORT
“_Der Langer Franz_, a view of the Rathaus tower that took its nickname
from a tall burgomaster of the town, is a little gem, brilliant with
light and rich in the mystery of shadow.”
Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching. 4⅞ × 3⅜ inches]
Among the new plates are four that deal with street scenes in the Alt
Stadt of Frankfort. _Der Langer Franz_, a view of the Rathaus tower
that took its nickname from a tall burgomaster of the town, is the
smallest of all, but a little gem, brilliant with light and rich in the
mystery of shadow. Then there are the _Street of the Three Kings_, the
_Bendergasse_, and _Sixteenth-century Houses_, all of them felicitous
in charm of theme, in play of light and shade, and in the suggestion of
life given by the animated figures. There are admirable figures again
in _An Old Court_, one of the plates that the collector of future days
will most desire to possess. There is less in it of obvious labor than
in the street scenes; the etcher has overcome a natural fear of blank
spaces; and his reticence and more summary execution have lent to this
plate much of the unconscious and unpremeditated charm that is one of
the finest qualities which an etching can possess.
Two etchings of old bridges over the Main at Frankfort must rank
among the best work that Webster has yet produced. One is a small and
spirited plate showing the tower of the cathedral and a row of houses,
most delicately drawn, rising with a beautiful sky-line above the solid
mass of the shadowed bridge with its heavy buttresses. The other shows
the old bridge that spans the Main between Frankfort and Sachsenhausen.
Legend tells that in compensation for finishing the building within
a certain time the architect made a vow to sacrifice to the devil
the first living being that crossed the bridge. Then, when the fatal
day arrived, he drove a cock across, and so cheated the devil of his
due. Much the same story of outwitting the devil is told about the
building of the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle. Whether Webster ventured
upon any compact I do not know; but this plate, in its building, in
its well-constructed composition, in its splendid effect of brilliant
sunshine, is one of the most successful tasks he has ever accomplished.
The group of figures on the near bank, happily placed like those in
Vermeer’s famous _View of Delft_, adds no little to the charm of the
scene. I would set this plate beside _Les Blanchisseuses_ and the
_Quai Montebello_, which Mr. Wedmore has found “modestly perfect,” as
representing the very summit of Webster’s art.
[Illustration: WEBSTER. THE OLD BRIDGE, FRANKFORT
This old bridge spans the river Main between Frankfort and Sachsenhausen
“I would set this plate beside _Les Blanchisseuses_ and _Quai
Montebello_, which Mr. Wedmore has found ‘modestly perfect,’ as
representing the very summit of Webster’s art.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 5½ × 8½ inches]
[Illustration: WEBSTER. LA RUE ST. JACQUES, PARIS
“... One of the best etchings he has ever made.... It is not merely
fine in its pattern of light and shade, but it has a direct force and
simplification that are rich with promise for the future.”
Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 8⅝ × 5⅞ inches]
While he has surrendered for the time being to the charm of Frankfort,
Webster has not been unfaithful to the Paris of his early love. Of
Paris he might say, like Montaigne, “That city has ever had my heart;
and it has fallen out to me, as of excellent things, that the more
of other fine cities I have seen since, the more the beauty of this
gains on my affections. I love it tenderly, even with all its
warts and blemishes.” All the more for the warts and blemishes of
its old buildings Webster loves it, too; and while working on his
Frankfort plates he has completed another of _La Rue St. Jacques,
Paris_, which, I think, is one of the best etchings he has ever
made. At times, even in his Frankfort plates, one still feels that
his superb draughtsmanship and his love of detail--_ce superflu, si
nécessaire_--have led him to a uniformity of finish that is almost
too “icily regular.” I do not mean that Webster’s elaboration is the
cold, almost meaningless, elaboration of the line-engraver; nor do I
forget that the technique of Meryon, one of the greatest masters of
etchings, was, in Mr. Wedmore’s happy phrasing, “one of unfaltering
firmness and regularity, one of undeterred deliberation.” All the same,
one wishes that Meryon had done a few more things like the _Rue des
Mauvais Garçons_, and wishes that Webster also, in a similar way, were
now and then less sure of himself, were held sometimes by a trembling
hesitancy, or driven sometimes by the passion of the moment to allow
room for fortunate accident and rapid suggestion. For that reason I
welcome his _Rue St. Jacques_. It is not merely fine in its pattern of
light and shade, but it has a direct force and simplification that are
rich with promise for the future.
Since writing the above, I have seen working-proofs of two new etchings
of landscape. And here, too, there is high promise. They show, at
least, that Webster is not going to remain a man of one subject; that
he is opening his heart to the beauty and romance of simple nature. He
has sought his first themes in that pleasant countryside where, between
tall poplars, you get peeps of Château Gaillard, nobly set upon its
hill. In landscape, as in his architectural work, Webster sets his
theme upon the plate with fine skill of arrangement and with exquisite
draughtsmanship. These two plates, _Château Gaillard_ and _La Route
de Louviers_, are exhilarating in their feeling of sunshine, and they
please by their absolute simplicity of statement. They are honest, and
without artifice. Printed “as clean as a whistle,” without any of the
doubtful expedients that give a meretricious attractiveness to so much
modern etching, they appeal by their rightness of pattern and precision
of line. Those who see high promise as well as present fulfilment in
Webster’s art, will not regret that he has left the town and set out
where
thro’ the green land,
Vistas of change and adventure,
The gray roads go beckoning and winding.
ANDERS ZORN--PAINTER-ETCHER
BY J. NILSEN LAURVIK
Broadly speaking there are but two kinds of artists--innovators and
imitators. The first may be known by the opposition they arouse in
the sacred sanctums of mediocrity and by their final but reluctant
acceptance by the self-appointed custodians of the Hall of Fame whose
business it is to exclude genius until Time shall have tempered all its
buoyant, youthful enthusiasms, which are the very signs and tokens of
those starry creatures whom the gods have blessed. Youth and all its
amazing prodigality are of the very essence of genius, and it is by
virtue of this exuberant overflowing of the spirit that the works of
Anders Zorn make their vital appeal.
He celebrates with fervent, dramatic strokes the pageant of the visible
world, and all that his alert eyes can see his nimble fingers depict
with an unfailing sense of the pictorial possibilities inherent in the
passing procession of contemporary life. There is in his work something
of childlike spontaneity,--a healthy, natural enjoyment in the mere
practice of his art that is infectious. He has the same impartial
love for nature as it is as had Velasquez and Frans Hals, and the
same incomparable interdependence of head and hand. His art is, in
the best sense of the word, purely objective, dedicated to a specific
transcription of the outward semblance of things. These bright,
vivacious plates are not evolved by any painful process of mental
cogitation, nor are they the result of imaginative vagaries.
Zorn is concerned but little with abstract form or involved
compositions. But he cannot be accused of evading difficulties through
any fear of failure, as he has so convincingly demonstrated in his
vivid, sun-flecked _Interior of a Parisian Omnibus_ with its sharply
characterized passengers, and in his dramatically effective _Waltz_
with its assemblage of swaying figures moving rhythmically through the
spacious ball-room, both marvels of discerning observation recorded
with an almost clairvoyant magic of line that evoke the kaleidoscopic
shimmer and brilliancy of the scenes depicted. The difficulties
presented by these complex subjects are surmounted with the same
nonchalant ease and certainty that distinguish his long series of
individual portraits and figure pieces. That the latter predominate
in the hierarchy of his etched work is a matter of choice rather than
of chance and may, I think, be taken as an indication of his keen
appreciation of the limitations as well as the possibilities of this
medium. No one, not even Whistler, has realized more clearly than he
that etching at its best is essentially an impressionistic art, to be
practised only in the happiest moods, and his finest plates are marvels
of swift, stenographic notations that have been scratched upon the
copper direct from nature in a white heat of enthusiasm.
[Illustration: ZORN. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE
Size of the original etching, 12½ × 8⅜ inches]
[Illustration: ZORN. THE WALTZ
Size of the original etching, 13¼ × 9 inches]
He calls etching his diversion, which accounts for the uniformly
high quality of this side of his art. Done for the sheer love of
it, as other men would ride horseback or play golf, these plates are
the product of a joyousness that is the mother of all great art. It
is typical of him that he should have taken up the practice of this
exacting though elusive art merely as an amusement, as he himself
says, “with which to while away odd hours, instead of sitting at
home or going about for entertainment.” This is characteristic of
his whole life and harks back to the genesis of his artistic career
when, as a mere lad, he carved in birch-wood with his clasp-knife
images of the flocks he tended in the Dalecarlian forests. Even in
those early days this son of humble peasant folk revealed a power of
lifelike characterization that did not pass unnoticed by these shrewd,
clear-eyed peasantry whose sole criterion in matters of art was whether
or not the counterfeit presentment looked like the original. And in
these small carved images of cows and sheep they found a striking
resemblance to their models that aroused their keenest admiration. His
first patron was one of these peasant folk, a shepherd friend of his,
who bought from him a carved statuette of an enraged cow for which
Zorn received in payment a sou and a little white loaf. To make his
sculpture more lifelike he used to imitate antique statuary by tinting
his work. His palette was the palm of his hand, in which he mixed a
composite of bilberry juice and certain coloring substances obtained
from little forest flowers.
That was the beginning of a sturdy naturalism that no subsequent
academic training has been able to nullify. Even in these first
tentative attempts at personal expression he revealed the essential
qualities of his genius,--his very powerful color sense and his acute
observation of natural phenomena. His work betrays an almost savage
delight in the truth of nature, and if to be truthful is to be cruel,
then Zorn is often cruel. He employs no gentle gloss, and, whether it
be friend or casual sitter, each is treated with unblushing frankness.
A full-blooded art, somewhat primitive and exulting in its crude
strength, it gives one a pulsating sense of reality. His work has the
natural daring of one who is on familiar terms with all the secrets
of his art. Conveying an appearance of brilliant, almost reckless
improvisation, it is none the less the result of astute and penetrating
observation that has in each case recorded the face of actuality as
well as its deeper and abiding spirit.
Strongly opposed to all the conventionalities of the studio, he abhors
posing as much as he dislikes monogamy, preferring to study his
subjects under natural conditions when they are off their guard and
then to transcribe his impressions very largely from memory, after the
essential lines have been noted. Thus have come into being some of his
most memorable plates, such as the _Renan_, and the portrait of himself
and his wife, each executed in a few hours of concentrated effort. The
very swiftness with which these impressions have been recorded has no
doubt contributed much toward giving them that convincing finality
which, paradoxically enough, are theirs in a preëminent degree no
matter how casual may appear the means by which this effect has been
achieved. That is the impression left upon one by his illuminating
portrait of the pontifical-looking Renan, for example.
[Illustration: ZORN. MADAME SIMON
Size of the original etching, 9 × 6¼ inches]
[Illustration: ZORN. ERNEST RENAN
Size of the original etching, 9⅜ × 13½ inches]
Here is set down for all time in a few unerring lines the soul and body
of the man--the casuist and the voluptuary of thought, the Balzacian
bulk of him physically and the bigness of him mentally. The massive and
apparently grotesque exterior of this speculative dreamer, immersed in
his own meditations, conveys something of the same sense of aloofness
with which Rodin has invested his statue of Balzac. They both appear
to be dreaming of life and its mysteries until the immense torso seems
but an Olympian pedestal supporting the domelike head. It is more than
a pocket-edition biography, this portrait. Executed in one sitting in
Renan’s study in April of 1892, nine years after his initiation into
the mysteries of etching, this plate may be said to epitomize the whole
art of Zorn,--his vigorous truthfulness, his synthetic treatment of
salient points of character, and his love of dramatic contrasts of
sharply juxtaposed masses of black and white. Moreover, it furnishes a
striking exposition of the purely technical side of his art in which
he has created for himself a highly original and personal method. No
one has eschewed more rigorously than he the “happy accidents” employed
as a convenient cloak by masquerading incompetents, foisting their
meaningless scrawls on a bewildered public, to whom etching has become
synonymous with a pretty dilettantism that is within the easy reach of
every aspiring fledgling of art. These parallel, slanting strokes that
seem to cut and divide the form into unrelated sections are really the
expression of an accurate and well-defined intention that manifests
itself in the extraordinary verisimilitude of the figure and its
adroitly suggested accessories. It is like a fleeting glimpse in a
mirror in which the impalpable spirit of reality is reflected, evoking
by some mysterious incantation the most fugitive nuances of expression
and gesture with the slightest inflection of his modeling.
It is the extreme refinement and subtility in this seeming brutality
that give to these plates their unique value and interest. Seldom
has a man suggested his predecessors less than does Zorn in these
epigrammatic etchings. They are according to no established formula.
If he has looked upon Rembrandt, as what practitioner of aqua fortis
has not, there is but slight evidence of it in these straightforward
vibrant plates. To be sure, he has the same love of bold contrasts of
light and shade as had the master of Amsterdam, without the romantic
glamour of the dreamy Dutchman. This modern Swede is more direct, more
incisive, his line has something of the penetrating and biting analysis
of a page from Strindberg, and not infrequently, as in the case of
his haunting portrait of the besotted poet Paul Verlaine, there is
discernible a sort of ironic humor that throws a revealing light upon
his sitter. With what discerning and subtle insight he has portrayed
that gentle flavor of intellectual skepticism which is the chief
characteristic of Anatole France; while the head of Rodin, laughing in
his foaming beard, is highly indicative of the immense creative energy
of the author of _Le Penseur_. In every instance he has successfully
summarized the essential and abiding characteristics of his sitter,
no less effectually accomplished in the twenty-minute impromptu of
Marcelin Berthelot than in the more deliberately studied portrait
of Marquand, or the very succinctly realized version of August
Strindberg, the Swedish author. These portraits of contemporary men and
women are fascinating records of repeated excursions into the realm of
_character_, which holds for Zorn the strongest appeal, as it has ever
for all men of the North, whose supreme happiness is the realization of
a clearly defined individualism.
[Illustration: ZORN. AUGUST STRINDBERG
Size of the original etching, 11⅜ × 7⅝ inches]
[Illustration: ZORN. SUNDAY MORNING IN DALECARLIA
Size of the original etching, 10¾ × 7¾ inches]
While Zorn to-day occupies a position of unchallenged supremacy in the
difficult and exacting field of portraiture--his portrait etchings
would alone make a notable Pantheon of contemporary worthies--it is in
his frank, unabashed nudes and in his delineations of Swedish peasant
types that we find the most personal expression of his peculiar genius.
Nowhere has his faculty of instantaneous perception, his ability to
grasp at a glance and in its entirety either an isolated individual or
a group of figures, been employed to greater advantage than in these
brilliant, dazzling nudes and in these veracious records of his beloved
Dalecarlian peasants. With a few swift, sure strokes he gives us the
soft contour, the undulating curves of the fresh, firm flesh, of these
strong-limbed Junos, as well as the wrinkled, time-worn visages of the
aged tillers of the soil.
His interest in this type is not episodic, it is persistent. They were
his first subjects as well as his first patrons, and throughout his
career it is to them that he has turned for rest and refreshment from
the social banalities of the mundane life in the great capitals of the
world where he is in constant demand as a painter of exclusive society.
At heart he remains a peasant, retaining a strong love for the scenes
of his boyhood with all their simple associations. Here he is at home,
and here he has given untrammeled expression to that paganism which is
the dominant trait of his character. He delights in portraying these
sturdy, flaxen-haired peasants in all the unconscious abandon of their
naïve natures, and the series of plates celebrating the intimate life
of these people are the most authentic expressions of his art because
the most closely related to the mainsprings of his personality.
His love of the unstudied, unposed naturalness of life has found its
culminating expression in these nudes of women and children as seen in
the open air in the free solitude of the shores of Dalecarlia. Zorn
regards nature with the eagerness of the primitive, and these ruddy
women are virile protests against the anemic, hyperæsthetic refinements
of the school-room conventions. Stripped of all regard for the accepted
ideals of feminine beauty these women of Zorn repel or appeal by the
unfeigned candor of every look and gesture. These big, blonde women,
whose naked bodies move with unrestrained freedom through the tonic,
balsam air are imbued with a superb, healthy animalism such as has
never been depicted in the whole history of art. They spring from a
strong artistic impulse that has its roots in the subsoil of nature.
To see these frankly realistic versions of unsophisticated, throbbing
femininity is to feel that the nude has never before been adequately
portrayed--all other nudes seem mere means toward some elaborately
preconceived end while those of Zorn are gloriously self-sufficing, an
end in themselves.
[Illustration: ZORN. THE BATHER, SEATED
Size of the original etching, 6¼ × 4¾ inches]
[Illustration: ZORN. EDO
“Edo” is the name of the Swedish island where Zorn etched this
beautiful plate
Size of the original etching, 7 × 4⅝ inches]
An ardent sensuousness marks all these things, but it is sane and
wholesome, with no trace of doubtful submeaning. That is strikingly
exemplified in _My Model and my Boat_, in which the exuberant,
re-creating force of life is presented in all its tantalizing
seductiveness of ample, quivering curves. The beauty of vigorous
symmetry, of inherent strength, overcome the somewhat obvious
coarseness of the type of woman depicted here, and one can have nothing
but admiration for the underlying sincerity as well as the consummate
mastery revealed in every stroke of these plates. But the purely
physical allure of his nudes is by no means always as insistent as in
the foregoing. The elusive and half-reticent feminine charm has not
escaped him, and there are some nudes out of doors, in the lambent
light of dawn and twilight, more delicate, more subtly suggestive, than
anything hitherto accomplished in etching.
The nudes of Rembrandt would look singularly coarse and heavy by
comparison with these silvery, exquisitely modeled Brunhildas of
Zorn, who disport themselves on the sunlit beach or emerge from
the enveloping shadow of some protruding cliff with a childlike
unconsciousness and a pagan naïveté that disarms prudish prejudices. In
its supple grace and vibrant vitality the delicately modulated back of
the bending figure of _The Bather--Evening_ is a pantheistic hymn to
the eternal efflorescence of life. She pauses in the silvery twilight,
before breaking the surface of the mirror-like lake into a thousand
jewels of refracted light, and she is as much a part of the enshrouding
stillness as the aged rocks on which she stands. Whistler never did
anything more evanescent than the landscape of this plate, which is
printed in a key as light and airy as the magically executed lines,
that give the softness of the figure’s contours as well as the hardness
of the rocks and the veiled serenity of distant lake and woodland.
It is a splendid affirmation of the extremely delicate sensibilities
possessed by this most vigorous and brilliant of contemporary etchers,
whose art is one of the most powerful and significant manifestations of
the re-awakened æsthetic impulse of the twentieth century.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Small capitals have been capitalised.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.