The old-world Etchers, and their due place in the collector’s
estimation--Claude--Dumesnil’s list of his etched work--Principal
pieces--The money value of Claude’s etchings--Vandyke’s etched
portraits--Ostade--Richard Fisher’s Ostades--Their
prices--Wenceslaus Hollar--The immense volume of his work--Its
character--Its appreciation by Heywood and Seymour Haden--Prices of
Hollars in the print-market.
As I think that, speaking generally, the wisest collector is the
collector who devotes himself to original work, we will begin the study
of some various departments of the collector’s pursuit by a group of
chapters on work that is wholly original. And among work that is wholly
original, what is there that--since chronological order cannot require
to be strictly observed--deserves to take precedence of the art of
Etching? Not only is the art up to a certain point popular to-day--that
is a consideration which need not affect the wise collector very
much--but it is, of all the arts of Black and White, the one which
lends itself most readily to the expression of a mood--therefore to
the expression of a personality. In Line-Engraving, of which the
finest examples cannot, on many grounds, be esteemed too highly, the
_chef-d’œuvre_ is slow of accomplishment. In Etching, the hour may
produce the masterpiece, though indeed many a masterpiece has involved
something more than the labour of a day.
Of old-world etchers whose plates should occupy the collector
seriously--of old-world etchers between whom he may take his choice,
or, if he prefer it, divide his attention--there are, after all, but a
few. To have named Claude, Vandyke, Rembrandt, Ostade, and Hollar, is
to have named the chief. Other Dutch _genre_ painters than Ostade of
course etched cleverly: only one with his perfection--his perfection,
I mean, when he was at his best--Bega. Behind Rembrandt was a group
of men, some of whom simply imitated, others of whom followed in ways
more nearly their own. Other Dutchmen, again, like Backhuysen and
Adrian Van de Velde and Zeeman--whom, nearly two centuries afterwards,
Méryon worshipped--did work that need not be put aside. Latterly it has
not been put aside; for in a recent _Portfolio_ Mr Binyon made it the
subject of special study. But still the greater men are the few who
were named first.
Of these great men, it was Claude, Vandyke, and Ostade who wrought
the fewest plates. As for Vandyke, not only was his work not vast in
quantity--his labour upon each particular plate stopped at an early
stage. To the copper’s detriment, as many think, others continued it,
and Vandyke’s etchings are only entirely his own in that first Stage
which is the stage of the sketch. Yet are they far indeed from being
worthless afterwards. A background is added. The record of character
remains pretty much the same.
It was not quite thus with Claude. He, like other great masters,
and like some small ones, suffers by the mischief of “re-touching”;
but nothing done upon his plates, or upon any imitations of them,
carries the work much further than Claude himself had carried it.
With all the free and easy handling of the point, there is an obvious
completeness--a completeness not only for the initiated--in some of
the very best of his work. In tone, in delicacy of chiaroscuro, the
plate of the _Bouvier_--the masterpiece for atmospheric effect--is
carried as far as it could have been carried by line-engraving. It has
indeed quite as much atmosphere, though not quite as much delicacy
of contour, as the marvellous plates done on about the same scale by
the translators of Turner, whom Turner in a measure trained--I mean
especially the men who wrought upon the _Southern Coast_ series: George
Cooke with _Margate_, Horsburgh with _Whitstable_, the incomparable
William Miller with _Portsmouth_ and _Clovelly_. Claude’s _Campo
Vaccino_, again, is equally finished to the corners; and so, of course,
in its perhaps subtler fashion, is the famous _Sunset_ (Dumesnil, No.
15). _Cattle Going Home in Stormy Weather_ has the appearance of more
summary labour, a freedom more convincing, and more appropriate to that
effect of atmosphere, which, together with the movement of beasts and
herdsmen, the plate is devoted to recording. Again, complete tonality
is not sought for--at all events is not obtained--in _Shepherd and
Shepherdess Conversing_, which yet, in the rare First State of it,
which alone is entirely worthy, is full from end to end of Claude’s
happiest and freest, and--dare one say?--most playful work in the
draughtsmanship of foliage. In the Second State one tall tree is
deprived of its height and grace. The picture is spoilt, or, if not
spoilt, marred.
It is now four-and-twenty years since, at the Burlington Fine Arts
Club, there was held a well-chosen and perhaps the first and last
important exhibition of the etchings of Claude. Dumesnil’s list of
all Claude’s work in _aquafortis_ includes forty-two prints--some of
them unimportant; and of the forty-two, the Burlington Club, with
access to the best collections everywhere (whatever modest things may
have been said on this occasion to the contrary), managed to show
twenty-six. Besides the plates mentioned in the preceding paragraph,
the _Dance by the Waterside_, the _Dance under the Trees_, and the
_Wooden Bridge_ are amongst the things one would covet. In the _Wooden
Bridge_ there is the whole spirit of the broad Italian land. A fine
Second State, from the cabinet of some good collector--my own is from
John Barnard’s--represents the plate perfectly. Of the _Bouvier_
you are lucky if you can get a Second State. Sir Seymour Haden, who
would never tolerate a bad impression, long contented himself with a
Third, though some years before he parted with his things he managed
to acquire a First. That delightful collector, Richard Fisher, had a
First State of the _Cattle Going Home in Stormy Weather_, and a noble
little print it was. Mr Julian Marshall, who bought rare things in his
youth, and keenly appreciates them (though, while in his youth still,
he sold many), had, and doubtless retains, a First State of the _Rape
of Europa_, which, in an impression like his own--“early, undescribed,
before the plate was cleaned,” says the Burlington Club Catalogue--is
indeed most desirable.
As to the money value of Claude’s etchings, in the “States” and the
conditions in which they are alone desirable, the prices that were
reached at the Seymour Haden sale in 1891 are as good an indication as
one can well obtain. Sir Seymour’s beautiful and silvery First State of
_Le Bouvier_ was knocked down at £42; his _Dance under the Trees_--a
First State too--at £10; his _Sunrise_ (but it was a Fourth State) at
£5, 12s. 6d.; his _Shepherd and Shepherdess Conversing_, in the First
State, at £7 (and this was cheap); his _Campo Vaccino_, in the First
State, at £6, 6s. He had no _Wooden Bridge_. At Richard Fisher’s sale,
in 1892, the _Bouvier_, in a Second or Third State, fetched £15, and a
good impression of the _Dance under the Trees_, £12. It will be seen
that, rare though Claude’s etchings are, in good condition, they do
not, in England at least, when they appear in the auction-room, command
prices that can be called excessive.
The etchings of Vandyke, at all events the best of them, have fetched
more. It must be that their rarity, in the most desired condition,
is even greater. Sir Seymour Haden had a few superb ones. Vandyke’s
own portrait (Dutuit, No. 3) sold in the Haden sale for £60; the
pure etching of the _Snyders_ for £44; the _Suttermans_ for £30; the
_Lucas Vosterman_, £50; the masterly _De Wael_--which, even in an
early, well-chosen impression of a later State, one finds an enviable
possession--£17, 10s. The touch of Vandyke has nothing that is
comparable with Rembrandt’s subtlety, yet is it decisive and immediate,
and so far excellent. And Vandyke, however inclined he may have been
to undue elegance--an elegance _trop voulue_--in certain painted
portraits, seized firmly and nobly in his etched portraits of men (and
practically his etchings are only portraits of men) the masculine
character and the marked individuality of his models.
Of the etchings of Adrian van Ostade, Mr Fisher had what was
practically a complete collection--he had fifty plates; and as he
was a great admirer of this unquestioned master of _technique_, this
penetrating even if pessimistic observer of Life, he had taken care to
have impressions of good character: in some cases, as good as it is
ever possible to get. Inequality of course there was; and whilst here
and there an indifferent impression fell for a few shillings, sums as
important as have been paid for Ostades were realised for the rarest
and the best chosen things. We will consider the prices of the most
desirable. For a First State of the _Man and Woman Conversing_, £13 was
the ransom. £14 was paid for even the Fourth State of that rarity, _The
Empty Pitcher_. Herr Meder gave £63 for the Second State of a piece
which some call spirited and some call savage, _The Quarrel with Drawn
Knives_, and £26, 10s. for the First State of _A Woman Sitting on a
Doorstep_. £80 was paid by the same buyer for the First State of the
_Woman Singing_, and Mr Gutekunst gave £37 for a Fourth State of _The
Painter_. Could I become the owner of two masterpieces of Ostade, the
pieces which I should think worthy to be dignified with that name, and
which I should consequently proceed to possess, would be _The Family_
and the _Peasant Paying his Reckoning_. The first--not less excellent
than any other in _technique_--is full of homely piety and truth to
common things. It is one of Ostade’s larger pieces; and at the Fisher
sale, the First State, which had been in the Hawkins collection, passed
into the hands of Mr Deprez for £23. The _Peasant Paying his Reckoning_
is one of the smaller plates. As the title goes far to imply, it
represents a tavern visitor making ready to leave the cosy interior;
the landlady looking out with keenness for the sum that is due. The
piece teems with delicate observation, not only of character, but of
picturesque detail, and with light and airy touch. It was a wonderful
Fourth State that was in the Fisher collection; and £42 was the price
that Herr Meder, the most enterprising buyer of Ostades that day, had
to pay to call it his. An excellent connoisseur tells us that the
earliest impressions of Ostades are generally light in tone--that good
impressions are also often printed in a brownish ink, and that they are
without the thick line which invariably surrounds the later ones.
Wenceslaus Hollar, born at Prague in 1607, and working a long while in
London, under the patronage of Charles the First’s Lord Arundel, and
dying here amongst us, in Gardiner Street, Westminster, in 1677, was
a far more prolific etcher than either Claude, Vandyke, or Adrian Van
Ostade. In fact, that is not the way to put it at all; for whilst the
plates of each of these are to be counted at the most by scores, the
plates of Hollar mount to the number of two thousand seven hundred.
He was a craftsman of great variety and ingenuity of method. But it
has, of course, to be remembered of him that in certain figure-pieces
and mythological subjects at least, he was interpreter and populariser
of the inventions of another, and that in most of his interesting
little views he was a dainty but unmoved chronicler of pure fact. An
individual note--a wholly individual note--scarcely belongs to his
rendering of landscape or to his vision of the town. Yet he is a most
sterling artist--not a mere monument of industry--and his quaintness,
only a part of which he derives from his theme, is undoubtedly
attractive. The collector who collects his work has what is a faithful
record of some of the individuals and of many of the types of Hollar’s
time, and a fair vision of the ordinary aspect of the outward world of
Hollar’s day. The man’s industry was, as we have seen, colossal, and
even at the best he was but ill-rewarded. Fourpence per hour was, says
Mr Heywood, the price paid to him by the booksellers.
At present it may be that there is keener relish for his work in
Germany than here with us in England; but one great connoisseur, as
well as fine practitioner of Etching, of a generation not yet wholly
vanished, has extolled and collected him, praising him lately, it is
true, in terms more measured than those he had at first employed; and
another connoisseur, not born in earlier years than Sir Seymour Haden,
but earlier cut off, not living indeed to be old--I mean the Rev. J. J.
Heywood, who has been named already--was a devoted student of Hollar’s
endless labours. He prepared in great degree the Burlington Club’s
Exhibition of a large fine representative collection of Hollar’s works,
in 1875, and wrote the sympathetic preface to the Catalogue. On Hollar,
Parthey has long been the chief German authority; and with Parthey Mr
Heywood was familiar. But his own loving observation of the unremitting
work of the great Bohemian engraver of the Seventeenth Century--a
wanderer in Antwerp and in Strasburg, as well as a long resident in
London--furnished him with some material of his own, and the Burlington
Club Catalogue of such portion as was exhibited of Hollar’s great
volume of production, should be, wherever it is possible, in the hands
of the Hollar collector. It will acquaint him with very many of the
most desirable pieces, and will tell him, in a form more compact and
serviceable than Parthey’s, much about the recent resting-places of
the rarer Hollar prints. There are a few of these, of course, which
cannot pass into the hands of any private person. Of the large plate of
_Edinburgh_, for example, a thing Parthey had never seen, and which
was wrought in Hollar’s later time (in 1670), there exist in all the
world but two impressions. One is at Windsor, the other at the British
Museum.
When, however, the collector has got more than two thousand plates to
choose from, and to watch and wait for, he need not, save in sheer
“cussedness,” and because Humanity is built that way, trouble very
much about what is for ever inaccessible. I do not think that even a
colonial millionaire will set himself the task of collecting Hollar _en
masse_. Life is not long enough. The task would fall more properly to
a German student, since patience would be wanted yet more than money;
but, after half a century of work, the student would pass from us
with his self-set task still uncompleted. No: the sensible collector
wants of Hollar a compact selection. Such a group as Sir Seymour Haden
exhibited at the Fine Art Society’s--along with many other plates,
representing the masters of original etching--would form a nucleus,
at all events. Divided into classes in the following way--Topography,
Portraiture, Costume, Natural History, and History, that small
exhibited group included the _Antwerp Cathedral_, the _Royal Exchange_,
the _Nave of St George’s Chapel_, _Charles the First_, _Charles the
Second_, one of the plates of the _Muffs_--I trust it was the wonderful
study of five muffs alone, with the wearer’s wrists and arms just
lightly indicated--and two of the rare set of _Shells_, which are as
wonderful as the muffs for texture, but somehow a little drier. Of the
plate of the _Nave of St George’s Chapel_, Sir Seymour says that it
is the most amazing piece of “biting” that he knows, as to gradation
and _finesse_. Along with these plates--if he is fortunate enough
to get them--or even in place of some of them, as his taste prompts
him, let the collector appropriate the sets of the _Seasons_ and the
_Butterflies_, the little Islington set, known sometimes as _Six
Views in the North of London_, and the exquisite single plate (these
topographical plates that I am recommending are all small ones) known
as _London from the Top of Arundel House_. Of the “simple probity” of
Hollar’s work, and of its rightful charm, there will then be ample
evidence.
The prices of good Hollars have not of late years risen much: certainly
not much in comparison with those of other prints holding positions of
about the like honour. Much of his work, therefore, is quite within the
reach of modest and intelligent buyers. The latest really remarkable
collection sold was that of Seymour Haden, who had long possessed many
more of Hollar’s prints than he found room to exhibit, with other men’s
work in Bond Street. His greatest rarities--perhaps even his best
impressions--fetched good prices, but they were never sensational:
indeed, in several instances they did not substantially exceed those
realised twenty-three years earlier (in 1868), at Julian Marshall’s
sale. Thus, at the Julian Marshall sale, the _Long View of Greenwich_
passed under the hammer at £1, 15s., and at the Haden sale it sold
for £2, 5s. _London from the Top of Arundel House_, an impression of
singular excellence, fetched £6 in the Marshall sale; it fetched at the
Seymour Haden £9 12s.; but in this case there is reason to suppose that
Sir Seymour’s impression, though certainly good, was not equal to Mr
Marshall’s. _Sir Thomas Challoner_ (after Holbein) fetched £31, 10s.
at the Marshall sale, and I am not sure that it was not the very same
impression that afterwards, at Sir Seymour’s, fetched only £20. Each is
described as a “First State,” and each had belonged in the last century
to one of the greatest collectors of his time, John Barnard, whose
initials, written in a slow round hand, “J. B.,” delight the collector,
often, at the back of a fine print. The two impressions of _Sir Thomas
Challoner_ were surely really one. The portrait of _Hollar_, holding
his portrait of St Catherine, reached £6 at the Marshall sale; only
£5 at the Haden. On the other hand, the _Chalice_, which is said,
generally, to be from a design by Mantegna, was sold for £3, 10s. with
Mr Marshall’s things; for £5, 5s. with Sir Seymour’s. We need not make
further comparisons; but it will be well to end these comments upon
Hollar’s money value by some little additional quotation from the
priced catalogues of the later and larger sale of his prints. _The
Rake’s Lament_ fetched in 1891 £22; the _Antwerp Cathedral_, in the
First State, £8; that neat little set of six _Views about Islington_,
£2, 10s. (which, if the impressions were all good, was unquestionably
cheap); the _Royal Exchange_, in the First State, £16; _The Winter
Habit of an English Gentleman_, £8, 10s.; the set of _Sea Shells_,
or, rather, thirty-four out of the thirty-eight numbers that the
set contains, £67. Hollar, with such a mass of work to choose from,
and with the interest and excellence of much of it, appeals to the
collector who can dispense, at times, with vehemence and passion, and
who finds in quaintness and exactness, in steady technical achievement,
some compensation for the absence of a vision of exalted beauty.