Collector Series
FINE PRINTS
[Illustration:
The Collector Series
FINE
PRINTS
BY
FREDERICK
WEDMORE
EDINBURGH
JOHN GRANT
1905
AUTOGRAPHS AND MANUSCRIPTS
ENGLISH WATER-COLOURS
STAMPS
TAPESTRY LACE AND EMBROIDERY
MINIATURES
COINS
ENGLISH
BOOK PLATES
VIOLINS
PICTURES
PORCELAIN
OLD BIBLES
ANCIENT GLASS
]
FINE PRINTS
BY
FREDERICK WEDMORE
HONORARY FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF PAINTER-ETCHERS
_New and Enlarged Edition, with Fifteen Illustrations_
Edinburgh
JOHN GRANT
1905
PREFATORY NOTE FOR THE EDITION OF 1905
In this New Edition of a book which is supposed to have played some
little part in increasing the taste for Print Collecting here in
England, the few alterations I have made, in the text, are chiefly
verbal ones. I did not want to interfere, more than was absolutely
needful, with a piece of writing that, done at one time, possessed,
probably, along with all its faults and its deficiencies, some unity.
But it seemed good that certain additions, hardly outside the lines
on which the book had been planned--and which the passing of years,
more than anything else, had suggested--should be made, and grouped
together in a short, separate Chapter--“Postscript: 1905.” That has
been accomplished. And this “Postscript” deals very briefly with a few
artists, new or not noticed before--deals too with certain changes in
money value, as to which no indication can be more than approximate.
It has been necessary to extend, to a small extent, the Bibliography.
And it has been convenient to suppress certain of the Illustrations
that appeared in the Original Edition, and to supply others in the
place of them.
F. W.
LONDON: _September, 1905_.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PREFATORY NOTE FOR THE EDITION OF 1905 3
INTRODUCTION 9
I. THE TASK OF THE COLLECTOR 23
II. CLAUDE, VANDYKE, OSTADE, HOLLAR 35
III. REMBRANDT 48
IV. FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 66
V. WHISTLER AND HADEN 100
VI. LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 122
VII. DÜRER: THE “LITTLE MASTERS” 139
VIII. ITALIAN LINE ENGRAVERS 158
IX. FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PRINTS 169
X. TURNER PRINTS 188
XI. MEZZOTINTS 209
XII. LITHOGRAPHS 221
APPENDIX: CERTAIN WOODCUTS 241
POSTSCRIPT FOR THE EDITION OF 1905 245
BIBLIOGRAPHY 250
INDEX 255
ILLUSTRATIONS
_The Landscape with the Obelisk_ _To face page_ 54
From REMBRANDT’S Etching.
_Lutma: the Goldsmith_ _To face page_ 60
From REMBRANDT’S Etching.
_Clément de Jonghe_ _To face page_ 62
From REMBRANDT’S Etching.
_La Morgue_ _To face page_ 82
From MÉRYON’S Etching.
_The Little White Horse_ _To face page_ 140
From DÜRER’S Engraving.
_Coat of Arms with the Cock_ _To face page_ 146
From DÜRER’S Engraving.
_Adam and Eve_ _To face page_ 154
From SEBALD BEHAM’S Engraving.
_Panel of Ornament_ _To face page_ 156
From Engraving by LUCAS VAN LEYDEN.
_Dance of Damsels_ _To face page_ 164
From ZOAN ANDREA’S Print after MANTEGNA’S design.
_Saint Cecilia_ _To face page_ 166
From MARC ANTONIO’S Engraving after RAPHAEL.
_Le Jeu de l’Oye_ _To face page_ 178
From the Engraving after CHARDIN.
_La Toilette_ _To face page_ 184
From the Engraving after BAUDOUIN.
_The Straw Yard_ _To face page_ 192
From TURNER’S “Liber Studiorum.”
_Spring_ _To face page_ 210
From LUCAS’S Mezzotint after CONSTABLE.
_Miss Oliver_ _To face page_ 218
From MARCHI’S Mezzotint after REYNOLDS.
FINE PRINTS
INTRODUCTION
In the collecting of Prints--of prints which must be fine and may most
probably be rare--there is an ample recompense for the labour of the
diligent, and room for the exercise of the most various tastes. Certain
of the objects on which the modern collector sets his hands have, it
may be, hardly any other virtue than the doubtful one of scarcity;
but fine prints, whatever School they may belong to, and whatever may
be the money value that happens to be affixed to them by the fashion
of the time, have always the fascination of beauty and the interest
of historical association. Then, considered as collections of works
of art, there is the practical convenience of their compactness. The
print-collector carries a museum in a portfolio, or packs away a
picture gallery, neatly, within the compass of one solander-box.
Again, the print-collector, if he will but occupy himself with
intelligent industry, may, even to-day, have a collection of fine
things without paying overmuch, or even very much, for them. All will
depend upon the School or master that he particularly affects. Has he
at his disposal only a few bank-notes, or only a few sovereigns even,
every year?--he may yet surround himself with excellent possessions,
of which he will not speedily exhaust the charm. Has he the fortune
of an Astor or a Vanderbilt?--he may instruct the greatest dealers
in the trade to struggle in the auction-room, on his behalf, with
the representatives of the Berlin Museum. And it may be his triumph,
then, to have paid the princely ransom of the very rarest “state”
of the rarest Rembrandt. And, all the time, whether he be rich man
or poor--but especially, I think, if he be poor--he will have been
educating himself to the finer perception of a masculine yet lovely
art, and, over and above indulging the “fad” of the collector, he will
find that his possessions rouse within him an especial interest in some
period of Art History, teach him a real and delicate discrimination
of an artist’s qualities, and so, indeed, enlarge his vista that his
enjoyment of life itself, and his appreciation of it, is quickened and
sustained. For great Art of any kind, whether it be the painter’s, the
engraver’s, the sculptor’s, or the writer’s, is not--it cannot be too
often insisted--a mere craft or sleight-of-hand, to be practised from
the wrist downwards. It is the expression of the man himself. It is,
therefore, with great and new personalities that the study of an art,
the contemplation of it--not the mere bungling amateur performance of
it--brings you into contact. And there is no way of studying an art
that is so complete and satisfactory as the collecting of examples of
it.
And then again, to go back to the material part of the business, how
economical it is to be a collector, if only you are wise and prudent!
Of pleasant vices this is surely the least costly. Nay, more; the
bank-note cast upon the waters may come back after many days.
The study of engravings, ancient and modern--of woodcuts, line
engravings, etchings, mezzotints--has become by this time extremely
elaborate and immensely complicated. Most people know nothing of it,
and do not even realise that behind all their ignorance there is a
world of learning and of pleasure, some part of which at least might be
theirs if they would but enter on the land and seek to possess it. Few
men, even of those who address themselves to the task, acquire swiftly
any substantial knowledge of more than one or two departments of the
study; though the ideal collector, and I would even say the reasonable
one, whatever he may actually own, is able, sooner or later, to take
a survey of the larger ground--his eye may range intelligently over
fields he has no thought of annexing.
From this it will be concluded--and concluded rightly--that the
print-collector must be a specialist, more or less. More or less, at
least at the beginning, must he address himself with particular care
to one branch of the study. And which is it to be? The number of fine
Schools of Etching and Engraving is really so considerable that the
choice may well be his own. This or that master, this or that period,
this or that method, he may select with freedom, and will scarcely go
wrong. But the mention of it brings one, naturally, to the divisions of
the subject, and the collector, we shall find, is face to face, first
of all, with this question: “Are the prints I am to bring together to
be the work of an artist who originates, or of an artist who mainly
translates?”
Well, of course, in a discussion of the matter, the great original
Schools must have the first place, whatever it may be eventually
decided shall be the subject of your collection. You may buy, by all
means, the noble mezzotints which the engravers of the Eighteenth
Century wrought after Reynolds, Romney, and George Morland, but suffer
us to say a little first about the great creative artists, and then,
when the possible collector has read about them--and has made himself
familiar, at the British Museum Print-room say, with some portion of
their work--it may be that though he finds that they are nearly all,
however different in themselves, less decorative on a wall than the
great masters of rich mezzotint, he will find a charm and spell he
cannot wish to banish in the evidence of their originality, in the fact
that they are the creations of an individual impulse, whether they are
slight or whether they are elaborate.
The Schools of early line-engravers, Italian, Flemish, German, are
almost entirely Schools of original production. I say “almost,” for
as early as the days of Raphael, the interpreter, the translator,
the copyist, if you will, came into the matter, and the designs of
the Urbinate were multiplied by the burin of Marc Antonio and his
followers. And charming prints they are, these Marc Antonios, so little
bought to-day. Economical of line they are, and exquisite of contour,
and likely, one would suppose, to be valued in the Future more than
they are valued just now, when the rhyme of Mr. Browning, about the
collector of his early period, is true no longer--
“The debt of wonder my crony owes
Is paid to my Marc Antonios.”
That in the main the earlier work is original, is not a thing to be
surprised at, any more than it is a thing to lament. The narrow world
of buyers in that primitive day was not likely to afford scope for
the business of the translator; the time had not yet come when there
was any need for the creations of an artist to be largely multiplied.
That time came first, perhaps, in the Seventeenth Century, when the
immediately accepted genius of Rubens gave ground for the employment
of the interpreting talent of Bolswert, Pontius, and Vosterman. Again,
there was Edelinck, Nanteuil, and the Drevets.
It need scarcely be said that extreme rarity is a characteristic of the
early Schools. The prints of two of the most masculine of the Italians,
for instance, Andrea Mantegna and Jacopo de’ Barbarj, are not to be got
by ordering them. They have, of course, to be watched for, and waited
for, and the opportunity taken at the moment at which it arises. In
some measure there will be experienced the same engaging and preventive
difficulty in possessing yourself of the prints of the great Germans
and of the one great Flemish master, Lucas of Leyden. And if these,
in certain states at least, in certain conditions, are not quite as
hard to come upon as the works of those masters who have been mentioned
just before them, and of their compatriots of the same period, that
is but an extra inducement for the search, since there is, of course,
a degree of difficulty that is actually discouraging--a sensible man
does not long aim at the practically impossible. Now, in regard to the
early Flemish master with whom Dürer himself not unwillingly--nay,
very graciously--exchanged productions, there are yet no insuperable
obstacles to the collector gathering together a representative array
of his work; it is possible upon occasion even to add one or two of
his scarce and beautiful and spirited ornaments to the group, such
as it may be, of subjects based on scriptural or on classic themes.
To be a specialist in Lucas van Leyden would be to be unusual, but
not perhaps to be unwise; yet a greater sagacity would, no doubt, be
manifested by concentration upon that which is upon the whole the finer
work of Albert Dürer. Of late years, Martin Schöngauer too, with the
delicacy of his burin, his tenderness of sentiment, and his scarcely
less pronounced quaintness, has been a favourite, greatly sought for;
but, amongst the Germans, the work that best upon the whole repays the
trouble undertaken in amassing it, is that of the great Albert himself,
and that of the best of the Little Masters.
And who, then, were the Little Masters? a beginner wants to know.
They were seven artists, some of them Dürer’s direct pupils, all of
them his direct successors; getting the name that is common to them
not from any insignificance in their themes, but from the scale on
which it pleased them to execute their always deliberate, always
highly-wrought work. There is not one who has not about his labour
some measure of individual interest, but the three greatest of the
seven are the two brothers Beham--Barthel and Sebald--and that Prince
of little ornamentists, Heinrich Aldegrever. Nowhere was the German
Renaissance greater than in its ornament, and the Behams, along with
subjects of Allegory, History, and Genre, addressed themselves not
seldom to subjects of pure and self-contained design. Rich and fine
in their fancy, their characteristic yet not too obvious symmetry has
an attraction that lasts. Barthel was the less prolific of the twain,
but perhaps the more vigorous in invention. Sebald, certainly not
at a loss himself for motives for design, yet chose to fall back on
occasion--as in the exquisite little print of the _Adam and Eve_--upon
the inventions of his brother. There is not now, there never has been,
very much collecting here in England of the German Little Masters.
Three pounds or four suffices, now and again, to buy at Sotheby’s,
or at a dealer’s, a good Beham, a good Aldegrever. In their own land
they are rated a little more highly--are at least more eagerly sought
for--but with research and pains (and remembering resolutely in this,
as in every other case, to reject a bad impression), it is possible,
for a most moderate sum, to have quite a substantial bevy of these
treasures; and though large indeed in their design, their real art
quality, they are, in a material sense, as small almost as gems. Mr
Loftie, who made a specialty of Sebald Behams, was able, I believe, to
carry a collection of them safely housed in his waistcoat-pocket.
If we pass on from the Sixteenth to the Seventeenth Century, we have
the opportunity, if we so choose, of leaving Line Engraving, and of
studying and acquiring here and there examples of the noblest Etching
that has been done in the world. For the Seventeenth Century is the
period of Rembrandt--the period, too, of that meaner but yet most
skilful craftsman, Adrian van Ostade, and the period of the serene
artist of classic Landscape and Architecture, who wrought some twenty
plates in _aquafortis_--I mean Claude. In an introductory chapter to
a volume like the present, there is time and space to consider only
Rembrandt. And it cannot be asserted too decisively that in the study
and collection of Rembrandt, lies, as a rule--and must, one thinks, for
ever lie--the print-collector’s highest and most legitimate pleasure.
And even a poor man may have a few good Rembrandts, though only quite
a rich man can have them in great numbers and of the rarest. Rembrandt
is a superb tonic for people who have courted too much the infection of
a weakly and a morbid art. Not occupied indeed in his representations
of humanity with visions of formal beauty, his variety is unsurpassed,
his vigour unequalled; he has the great traditions of Style, yet is as
modern and as unconventional as Mr Whistler. Of the different classes
of Rembrandt’s compositions, the sacred subjects perhaps--at least some
minor examples of them--are the least uncommon; and in their intimate
and homely study of humanity, and often too in their _technique_, the
sacred subjects prove themselves desirable. Never, however, should
they be collected to the exclusion of the rarer Portraiture or of
the rarest Landscape. A _Lutma_, a _De Jonghe_, in a fine state and
fine condition, a _Cottage with a Dutch Haybarn_, a _Landscape with
a Tower_, attain the summit of the etcher’s art, and, both in noble
conception and magical execution, are absolutely perfect. Why, such
impressions of the Rembrandt landscapes as were dispersed but two or
three years since, when the cabinet of Mr Holford passed under the
hammer, appeal to the trained eye with a potency not a whit less great
than can any masterpiece of Painting; and, to speak in very soberest
English, no sum of money that it could ever enter into the heart of the
enthusiast to pay for them would be, in truth, a too extravagant, a too
unreasonable, ransom.
In the Eighteenth Century original Etching falls into the background,
and the skill of the engraver, in those lands where, in the Eighteenth
Century, it was chiefly exercised--in France, that is, and England--is
devoted in the main to no spontaneous creation, but to the translation
of the work of painters. In two mediums, thoroughly opposed or
thoroughly contrasted, yet each with its own value, the engraver’s
labour is executed; there flourished, side by side, the delicate School
of Line Engraving and the noble School of Mezzotint. Reproductive or
interpretive Line Engraving had done great things a generation or so
earlier, and even Mezzotint was not the invention of the Eighteenth
Century, though it was then that the art discovered by Von Siegen, and
practised with a singular directness by Prince Rupert, was brought to
its perfection. But the Eighteenth Century--even the latter half of
it--was certainly the period at which both arts were busiest; and not
so much the professed collector as the intelligent _bourgeois_ of the
time gathered these things together--in England chiefly Mezzotints,
in France chiefly Line Engravings--and a very few shillings paid for
the M‘Ardell or the Watson after Reynolds, and later for the Raphael
Smith or the William Ward after George Morland. Often the engraver was
a publisher of his own and other people’s prints. That was the case in
Paris as much as in London; and in Paris, in the third quarter of the
Eighteenth Century, the line engravers issued for a couple of francs
or so--and the _Mercure de France_ was apt, like newspapers in our own
day, to notice the publication--those admirable, and still in England,
too little known prints which record the dignified observation, the
sober, just suggested comedy of Chardin.
There were exceptions, of course, to the common rule that in the period
of our first Georges, and of Louis the Fifteenth, engraver’s work was
translation. Hogarth, in the first half of the century--about the time
when the French line engravers were occupied with their quite exquisite
translations of the grace of Watteau, Lancret, and Pater--wrought out
on copper with rough vigour his original conceptions of the Rake’s
and of the Harlot’s _Progress_, and not a few of his minor themes; but
when it came to the rendering into black and white of those masterly
canvases of _Marriage à la Mode_, professional engravers, such as
Ravenet and Scotin, were employed to admirable purpose, and a little
later the very colours of the canvas seemed to live, the painter’s very
touch seemed to be reproduced, in the noble mezzotints of Earlom. And
the immense successes of this reproductive engraving, with the art of
Hogarth, brings us back to the truth of our earlier proposition; the
period was a period of interpretation, not of original work, with the
engraver. The whole French Eighteenth Century School, from Watteau down
to Lavreince, is to be studied, and collected, too, in Line Engraving.
The School is not invariably discreet in subject: Lavreince has his
suggestiveness, though rarely does he go beyond legitimate comedy,
and Baudouin, François Boucher’s son-in-law, has his audacities; but
against these is to be set the dignified idyl of the great master of
Valenciennes; the work of Watteau’s pupils, too; the works of Boucher;
Massard’s consummate rendering, in finest or most finished line, of
this or that seductive vision of Greuze; the stately comedy of Moreau
le jeune; and, as I have said already, the excellent interpretations of
the homely, natural, so desirable art of Chardin.
Mezzotint really did for all the English painters of importance of the
Eighteenth Century, and in a measure for certain earlier Dutchmen,
all that Line Engraving accomplished for the French. “By these men I
shall be immortalised,” Sir Joshua said, when the work of M‘Ardell
and his fellows came under his view. Gainsborough, it is true, was not
interpreted quite so much or quite so successfully. But Romney has as
much justice done to him in later English Mezzotint as the luxurious
art of Lely and Kneller obtained from one of the earlier practitioners
of the craft--John Smith. Morland’s continued and justified popularity
in our own time is due to nothing half as much as to the mezzotints
by Raphael Smith, and Ward, and Young, and others of that troop of
brethren. And it was mezzotint, in combination with the bitten line
for leading features of the composition, that Turner, early in our own
century--in 1807--decided to employ in the production of those seventy
plates of _Liber Studiorum_ upon which, already even, so much of his
fame rests.
_Liber Studiorum_ occupies an interesting and a peculiar position
between work upon the copper wholly original and work wholly
reproductive. Turner etched the leading lines himself. In several
cases he completed, with his own hand, in mezzotint, the whole of
the engraved picture; but generally he gave the “scraping” to a
professional engraver, whose efforts he minutely supervised and most
elaborately corrected. In recent years, almost as much, though not
quite as much sought for as the _Liber_ plates of Turner, are certain
rather smaller mezzotints which record the art of Constable; but
Constable himself did nothing on these plates, though he supervised
their production by David Lucas. Turner’s connection with professional
engravers was not confined to the priceless and admirable prints of
the _Liber_. He trained a school of line engravers, welcoming at first
the assistance of John Pye and of George and William Cooke. These two
brothers were the engravers mainly of his _Southern Coast_, and nothing
has been more manly than that; but the work of William Miller, in
the _Clovelly_ of that _Southern Coast_, and in a subsequent series,
interpreted with quite peculiar exquisiteness those refinements of
light which in Turner’s middle and later time so much engaged his
effort.
With Turner’s death, or with the death of the artists who translated
him, fine Line Engraving almost vanished. It had all but disappeared
when, nearly fifty years ago, there began in France and England that
Revival of Etching with which the amateur of to-day is so rightly
concerned. A few etchings by Bracquemond--of still-life chiefly--a
larger number by Jules Jacquemart, of fine objects in porcelain,
jewellery, bronze, and noble stones, are amongst the more precious
products of the earlier part of the Revival of Etching, and they are so
treated that they are inventions indeed, and of an originality that is
exquisite. But the greatest event of the earlier years of the Revival
was the appearance, as long ago as 1850, of the genius of Méryon, who,
during but a few years, wrought a series of _chefs-d’œuvre_--inspired
visions of Paris--and died, neglected and ignored, in the great city to
which it is he who has raised, in those few prints of his, the noblest
of all monuments.
Two other men of very different genius and of unsurpassed energy we
associate with this revival of Etching. Both are yet with us in the
fulness of their years; and both will occupy the collector who is wise
in his generation, and will be, one may make bold to say, the delight
of the far Future as well as of the Present. I mean Sir Seymour Haden
and Mr. James Whistler. The prints of Seymour Haden shame no cabinet;
the best of Whistler’s scarcely suffer at all when placed beside
the master-work of Rembrandt. But it is dangerous treating much of
contemporaries when one’s task is chiefly with the dead; and though
I might mention many other not unworthy men, of whom some subsequent
historian must take count--nay, who may even be referred to at a later
stage of this volume--I will confine myself here, in this introductory
chapter, to just the intimation that Legros and Helleu are, next after
the etchers I have already named, those probably who should engage
attention.
CHAPTER I
The use and object of this book, and necessary limitations of its
service--Monographs for the specialist--The point of view of the
individual--The vastness of the Print-collector’s field--Fashions and
silly fads--Bartolozzi best in his “Tickets”--The Exaltation of the
coloured print--Its general triviality--The task of the
Collector--The fine impression--Brilliance--Condition--The
conservation of prints.
A little Guide to Print Collecting such as the present one, even
if written on very personal lines, not in the least concealing the
writer’s own prepossessions, and giving therefore, quite possibly,
what may seem disproportionate notice of certain masters, cannot,
of course, hope to entirely suffice for the special student of any
particular man. The special student will not, if he is reasonable,
find that the little book falls short of its aim, and fails to do its
proper work, because it does not and cannot possibly supply within its
limited volume all the information of which the accomplished student is
himself possessed, and which he feels to be more or less indispensable
even to the beginner who desires to be thorough. He will know--and
will scarcely need that I should here remind him--that not one book,
nor even a hundred books, can make an expert, can turn the tyro into
a practical connoisseur. What the tyro wants is experience, all that
is learnt by loss and gain, and by brushing shoulder to shoulder with
dealers and brother-collectors and the auctioneer in the auction-room.
He wants that, to become a practical collector at all, and to become
a specialist he wants that and something more. He wants access to
and acquaintance with a large and considerable branch of what is now
unquestionably an immense literature. There are larger books than
this of mine on the general theme of Print Collecting, and they have
been written at different times, with different prepossessions, with
different prejudices, from different points of view. But over and above
these larger books there is a library of monographs on particular
masters, works which are nearly always _Catalogues raisonnés_, and
often treatises to boot; and while no one of these monographs can be
altogether neglected by the would-be student of the artist with whom
it is concerned, some of them must be among the most cherished of his
companions, among the voiceless but instructive friends whose society
is education. No little book then, like the present one, can take the
place of experience and of the study of many books; and least of all
perhaps can a book which does not affect to be the abstract and brief
chronicle of what has been done before, but which prefers rather to
approach its large subject from the point of view of an individual
collector, who yet, it must be said, while cultivating specialties, has
not been inaccessible to the charm of much that lies beyond the limits
of any fields of his own.
So much by way of explanation--by way, too, of disarming the kind of
criticism which would judge a general endeavour only by the success
with which it seemed to meet the needs of a particular case. A
Bibliography of the subject, which will be found on later pages, and
which must itself be a selection, comparatively brief, from the mass of
material that bears upon the theme, will suffice to set the student of
the special school or master upon the desirable track; and meanwhile
one thing may be done, nor, as I hope, that one thing only: the
would-be tiller of the particular plot may be reminded of the vastness
of the land. Even of print collecting it is true, sometimes, that the
trees prevent you from seeing the forest.
I have said just now, in the print-collector’s world, how vast is the
land! Time, of course, tends to extend it--would extend it inevitably,
by reason of new production, did not Fashion sometimes intervene, and,
while opening to the explorer some new tract, taboo a district over
which he had aforetime been accustomed to wander. The fashions of the
wise are not wholly without reason, but the fashions of the foolish
have also to be reckoned with. As an instance, the very generation that
has seen the most just appraisement of original Etching has witnessed
too the exaltation of Bartolozzi and of his nerveless School, a decline
of interest in Marc Antonio, even to some extent in Albert Dürer, and
a silly rage for the coloured print which fifty years since was the
appropriate ornament of scrapbook and nursery.
I have spoken harshly of two classes of things which within the last
few years have found eager purchasers, and it is incumbent upon
me that I justify my harshness and warn the beginner all the more
effectually thereby. The Bartolozzis, then, which have been puffed so
absurdly--what is their real place? To begin with, they are--and in
this one respect they resemble Marc Antonios indeed, and the justly
extolled mezzotints which translate Sir Joshua--they are the work of an
engraver who interpreted the theme of another, and not of an engraver
who invented his own. But this it is evident that they may be, and yet
by no means be criminal. Wherein, it may be asked fairly, lies their
greater offence? It lies in this. That the Humanity they depict is
generally without character--that in no austere and in no captivating,
overwhelming beauty, but in its feeble grace, lies its chief virtue.
Bartolozzi was a good draughtsman. He was no doubt correct habitually,
and he was habitually elegant. Academic he was, though competent. But
again, how terribly monotonous was the order of his beauty, and how
weakly sentimental the design of those--Cipriani and Angelica Kaufmann
principal amongst them--to whose conceptions he lent at least a
measure of support! Of Bartolozzi’s works, the best for the collector
are the “Tickets.” They are on a small scale--dainty little engraved
invitations or announcements to the public of their day, giving the
opportunity to hear Giardini or Madame Banti, or some other singer of
songs or maker of excellent music. Delightful little compositions
they undoubtedly are, with the nude drawn charmingly. Half-a-dozen of
them I would possess with satisfaction. But all the rest!--all those
Bartolozzis which, as they increase in size, get (just as photographs
do) increasingly meaningless! The reasonable collector, if his instinct
be fine or his taste educated, will not desire these, even at prices
that may be comparatively insignificant, whilst Rembrandts, Dürers,
Claudes, Hogarths, Watteaus, Méryons, Whistlers, exist to delight the
world.
The coloured print--for it is time to make some brief allusion to
it--is often very “taking.” To the novice who does not think, it may
even appear to be entirely desirable. But, like the average Bartolozzi,
it is trivial at best. A pretty enough decoration for the wall of a
room in which artistic taste is neither accomplished nor severe, it
has at least to be recognised that its art is hybrid. The weight and
value of the light and shade of the engraving are apt to be minimised
or discounted by the application of colour; and the colour, though put
on with ingenuity, has little of the gradation and the subtle blending,
and nothing whatever of the “touch,” in which the art of the painter
in some measure consists. That is why a set of Wheatley’s “Cries of
London,” printed in bistre, is far better than a set which has the
superficial gaiety of many hues. A coloured Morland is a Morland
murdered. More tolerant may we be of the coloured prints of France; the
lighter art of a Taunay or of a Debucourt according not so ill with the
application of a process which boasts no other charm than the charm of
the _à peu près_. But even where the coloured print is least offensive
or least inadequate, no one can affect to discover in it the more
serious qualities of Art. Often, experts inform us, the colour was only
applied when the original work upon the plate was half worn out--when
the plate could yield no longer an impression that was satisfactory.
Then it was, at least in some cases, that the aid of colour--or some
approximation to the colour that a painter might have sought to
realise--was called in, and so the opportunity prepared for the foolish
rich of our period to pay great prices for an engaging _pis-aller_.
Uninstructed acquaintances, ill-judged dealers, and the habit of an
indolent world to regard old prints as humble examples of decorative
furniture--all these combine to make it possible for the beginner,
and even for the man of many winters who is outside Art, to spend his
time in accumulating objects no one of which is of the first order.
Even certain print-sellers, who ought to do much better, but who
possess, we must suppose, more of technical knowledge than of sure
and well-established taste, lend themselves to the diffusion of the
love of the second-rate. There are several high-class dealers now in
London, people of probity and of accomplishment, some of them young
men, too--a circumstance which bodes well for the future. But those
were safer days when the world of the collector lay within narrower
limits, and when the close contact that there was wont to be between a
few learned salesmen and a few scarcely less learned purchasers, who
bought, of course, gradually, who never bought things _en bloc_--who
studied and enjoyed, in fine, instead of merely possessed--made it
an unlikely matter that any quarter would be shown to the unworthy
productions of a vague and indifferent art. But the beginner of to-day
must take things as he finds them. If the root of the matter be in
him, his mistakes need not be serious. The opportunities for sagacious
choice in collecting yet remain frequent. If he collects fine things,
he will not, of course, succeed in acquiring so extensive a cabinet as
that which rejoiced the heart of his forerunner when prices were much
lower--when a Rembrandt, now worth a hundred guineas, was sold for a
ten-pound note. He must recognise, too, that a very large number of the
finest impressions--and it is upon fine impressions only that his mind
should be set--have come to be cloistered in National, in University,
even in some cases in Municipal institutions. But yet the field that
is open to him is a wide one, and, as was said in the Introduction, it
is possible for diligence and intelligence to accomplish much, even if
unaccompanied by a purse that is big and deep.
It has been customary in books on Collecting to say something about
the qualities that are desirable in a print--the qualities, I mean,
that, in their combination constitute, not a fine subject--that is
a different matter altogether--but a fine impression, an impression
such as the collector should wish to possess. And though, no doubt,
for certain readers, the treatise of Maberly, and the later and ampler
treatise of Dr Willshire, may be without difficulty accessible, the
expert will hold me blameless for not forgetting here the interests of
the beginner, and for therefore going, though it shall be rapidly, over
ground that, to the connoisseur, must needs be familiar.
The first and most indispensable requisite, then, for a fine impression
of a print, ancient or modern, is that the plate betray no signs of
wear, so that the scheme of the artist in line and light and shade
shall be presented still with virgin intactness. It may be a high
ideal to aim at, but it is not unattainable; and practically it is as
necessary in a Dürer three hundred years old as in a Whistler which
may have been wrought only twelve years ago. Very different qualities
of surface are, of course, sought for in prints of different kinds,
devoted to different effects. The perfection of one plate may be
attained when it is “brilliant”; the perfection of another when it is
“rich.” But in all, the signs of wear, and, in nearly all, the signs of
re-touching, are to be avoided. Wear is indicated perhaps most easily
by the absence of clearness in lines designed to be distinct, and by
an acquired evenness and monotony in passages which obviously were
never meant to be monotonous and even. Re-touching is a more subtle
matter. It is generally resorted to to repair the wear; and sometimes
the re-touching is the work of the original artist, and sometimes it is
the work of a later craftsman, concerned in the interests of publisher
or dealer, or it may be in his own, if it is he who has become the
possessor of the plate.
But an impression originally rich or brilliant, or brilliant and rich
at once, may, by ill-usage, or even by the absence of a delicate care,
have lost the qualities that commended it to its first possessor. The
beginner in print collecting must assure himself not only that the
work is still good, but that the surface is clean and fair. Then he
must look at the back of the print, must assure himself, by careful
examination there, that it has not been “backed,” or patched, or
mended: at all events, that all the mending it has required has been
slight and neatly executed. Damp is a deadly enemy of prints. They
pine for dry warm air as much as a soldier sent from out of Provence
into the chilliness of French Flanders. “_Il parait que ça grelottait
là-bas_,” said a Provençal once, to me, at Cannes. Many a print is as
sensitive to dampish cold as is an American consumptive. The collector
then must diagnose well--must satisfy himself as far as possible that
the seeds of disease are not in the print already--and if he buys the
print, he must see to its health carefully.
Let me here hasten, though, to assure him nothing more than reasonable
care is required, and I will tell him at once in what it consists. If
he frames his print, he had better order that the thickness of some
moderate mount--an eighth or twelfth of an inch is fully enough for the
purpose--intervenes between the surface of the print and the glass.
The glass may “sweat” from time to time, and obviously its moisture
must not be deposited upon the very object it exists to guard. If a
print has great money value, or if from any cause the collector sets
much store by it, it should not remain in any frame for more than a
few years without at least a careful re-examination. Fresh air will do
it good; and, moreover, it is good for the collector’s own eye (whose
delicacy ought to be cultivated by all possible means) that account be
taken of a print’s appearance not only when it is under glass. If the
collector, instead of framing his print, puts it in a portfolio, he
must see at least that it is so handled and managed that its surface is
not rubbed by the backs of other prints, or the backs of their mounts.
Where one print follows another in a portfolio or solander-box, the
mounts of all should be smooth. The portfolio must keep dust out as
well as it can. The solander-box will keep dust out much better. And
whether the print is in folio or box, or laid naked in the drawer or
shelf of a cabinet, it should be from time to time looked at, given,
so to put it, a “bath of air” on a sunny and dry day. A country-house,
unless the walls are very thick and the rooms kept very carefully, is
not the best place for a collection of prints, which (in England at
least) flourish most in the atmosphere of cities. It is in cities that
they require the least solicitude. I know very well, when I say this,
that it will be news to some people that prints require any solicitude
at all. I have pointed out that they do, but also that their possession
does not involve any overwhelming responsibility.
There is one other point as to the condition of a print--as to that
which it is desirable to find in it before we purchase it--that
should be touched upon before this chapter ends. That is the question
of margin. It may be that some worthy people are almost as sharply
divided upon the question of margin as are New York _gourmets_ upon
the question of how many minutes it takes to roast to perfection a
canvas-back duck. But the majority of collectors are advocates of
margins: they “take curious pleasure” in them, Mr Whistler remarks. A
margin undoubtedly has much to recommend it. While a print is mounted,
and even after it is mounted--on those occasions, I mean, when, under
examination, it passes from hand to hand--the margin helps to protect
it. Yet it is evident that a margin has no artistic merit, and that
therefore to establish a very great difference in money value between
the print with a margin and the print with none, is to be rather
absurd. Of course a print three hundred years old, which has conserved
its margin to some extent, is a yet greater rarity than a print which
has not; and as rarity--rarity of condition even--is paid for as well
as beauty, there is some just market-value in margin, no doubt.
But, unlike that fine condition of surface on which I have so much
insisted, the possession of margin is by no means strictly necessary.
It is sometimes an added grace, but never, at least in the case of a
print that is ancient, and that has been subjected probably to many
vicissitudes--never in such a case is it an indispensable virtue.
Rarely does the ample margin go back beyond the Eighteenth Century. In
your etching by Méryon or Haden--done fifty or thirty years ago--you
may expect some margin, fairly. In your noble line-engraving after
Chardin or Watteau, you may be glad of some, and may be grateful and
surprised if you find much. In your Rembrandt, a little enhances the
value. In your Dürer, an eighth of an inch, how precious and how rare!
In regard to the loss of a margin, while in the case of a very old
print it is due probably to gradual ravages and various little
accidents, in the case of engravings less old, and especially in the
case of engravings which (mezzotints, for example) have always been
held most decorative on a wall, it is due simply to the process of
framing. When the mezzotint--or whatever it is--was prepared for the
frame, the knife removed the margin at a stroke, and with it there
perished, for the future collector, some chance of exultation and not
inhuman boasting.