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diff --git a/old/66392-0.txt b/old/66392-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 9e068ac..0000000 --- a/old/66392-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2410 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Four Masters of Etching, by Frederick -Wedmore - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Four Masters of Etching - -Author: Frederick Wedmore - -Release Date: September 27, 2021 [eBook #66392] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive/American - Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR MASTERS OF ETCHING *** - - - - - FOUR MASTERS OF ETCHING - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - - This Edition is limited to - Two Hundred and Fifty Copies. - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - _FOUR MASTERS OF ETCHING_. - - - - - BY - - FREDERICK WEDMORE. - - - - - WITH ORIGINAL ETCHINGS - - BY - - HADEN, JACQUEMART, WHISTLER, AND LEGROS. - - - - - LONDON: - - _THE FINE ART SOCIETY, LIMITED._ - - 148, NEW BOND STREET. - - 1883. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - PREFACE - - -IT is well to say, in a word or two, what this short book aims at. -Unavoidably inferior to Mr. Hamerton’s in merit, it is voluntarily much -more limited in scheme. Taking only the four artists who seem to me most -worthy of note among the many good etchers of our day, it seeks to study -their work with a degree of detail unnecessary and even impossible in a -volume of wider scope. In trying to do this, it can hardly help -affording, at least incidentally, some notion of what I hold to be the -right principles of etching, nor can it wholly ignore the relation of -etching to other art, or the relation of Art to Nature and Life. But -these points are touched but briefly, and only by the way. - -A book of larger aim, on Etching in England and France, might -justifiably have given almost as much importance to Macbeth and Tissot -here, and to Bracquemond there, as has been given in the annexed pages -to Haden, Whistler, Jacquemart, and Legros. But Macbeth and Tissot -belong to a younger generation than do any of my four masters. Much of -what the art of etching could do in modern days was already in evidence -before their work began. My four masters are four pioneers. Bracquemond -may be a pioneer also; but in his original work, skilled and individual -as that is, he has chosen to be very limited. The place he occupies is -honourable, but it is small. - -About the four chapters that here follow I need say very little. That on -Seymour Haden has been passed through the _Art Journal_, that on Legros -through the _Academy_, that on Jules Jacquemart through the _Nineteenth -Century_. All have now been revised. Something of the chapter on -Whistler has also appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_, but in quite -different form, and I will explain why. In the first place, since that -article appeared, Mr. Whistler has given me cause to modify to some -extent my estimate of his art. Having seen this cause, I have acted on -it. I am not a Mede nor a Persian. And in a system of criticism which -seeks to inquire and understand, rather than to denounce, there is place -for change. Again, much of the article in the _Nineteenth Century_ was -occasioned not by Mr. Whistler’s practice, but by the attack which he -made upon a great teacher and critic, and, by implication, upon all -critics who allow themselves that abstinence from technical labour which -is often essential if their criticism is to be neither immature for want -of time to spend on it nor prejudiced because of their exclusive -association with some special ways or cliques in art. Whatever dealt -with this business I have now withdrawn. It was written for a particular -purpose, and its purpose was served. - -A word now on a matter of detail. Two expressions in the body of this -volume—“our _Dusty Millers_” (page 10), and “_M. Rodin_ here” (page -42)—which only the really careful reader will honour me by noticing, are -due to the fact that after the body of the volume was finally printed, -some change was made in the choice of the illustrations. For Mr. Haden’s -copper of _Dusty Millers_, I have been happy to be able to substitute -_Grim Spain_, the only Spanish subject of his which I thoroughly like. -And in place of M. Legros’s learned but hardly attractive portrait of M. -Rodin, it has been still more fortunate that it has been possible to -procure the portrait of Mr. Watts, the painter, one of the most -triumphant instances of Legros’s art. - - F. W. - -_London, 1883._ - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TABLE OF CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - CHAPTER I. SEYMOUR HADEN 1 - - CHAPTER II. JULES JACQUEMART 12 - - CHAPTER III. J. A. M. WHISTLER 28 - - CHAPTER IV. ALPHONSE LEGROS 40 - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. - - - PAGE - - “GRIM SPAIN” Etched by F. SEYMOUR 10 - HADEN - - ORIENTAL PORCELAIN by JULES JACQUEMART 16 - - PUTNEY by J. A. MCN. WHISTLER 36 - - PORTRAIT OF G. F. by ALPHONSE LEGROS 42 - WATTS, R.A. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER I. - - SEYMOUR HADEN. - - -PERHAPS the two qualities which, as one gets a little _blasé_ about the -productions of Art, continue the most to stir and stimulate, and to -quicken the sense of enjoyment, are the quality of vigour and the -quality of exquisiteness. If an artist is so fortunate as to possess -both these virtues in any fulness, he is sure not only to please a -chosen public during several generations, but to please the individual -student—if he be a capable student—at all times and in all moods, and, -of the two, perhaps, that is really the severer test. But to have these -qualities in any fulness, and in equal measure, is given to a man only -here and there over the range of centuries. It is given to a Titian, it -is given to a Rembrandt, and of course to a Turner; it is given in the -days of the Grand Monarch to a Watteau, and in the days of the Second -Empire to a Méryon. But so notable and rare a union is denied—is it -not?—even to a Velasquez; while what we praise most in Moreau le Jeune -is by no means a facility of vigour, and what is characteristic of David -Cox is certainly no charm of exquisiteness. To unite the two qualities—I -mean always, of course, in the fulness and equality first spoken -of—demands not a rich temperament alone. The full display of either by -itself demands that. It demands a temperament of quite exceptional -variety: the presence, it sometimes seems, almost of two -personalities—so unlike are the two phases of the gift which we call -genius. - -With the artists of energy and vigour I class Mr. Seymour Haden. Theirs -is the race to which, indeed, quite obviously, he belongs. Alive, -undoubtedly, to grace of form, fire and vehemence of expression are yet -his dominant qualities. With him, as the artistic problem is first -conceived, so must it be executed, and it must be executed immediately. -His energy is not to be exhausted, but of patience there is a smaller -stock. For him, as a rule, no second thought is the wisest; there is no -fruitful revision, no going back to-day upon yesterday’s effort; little -of careful piecing and patching, to put slowly right what was wrong to -begin with. He is the artist of the first impression. Probably it was -just and justly conveyed; but if not, there the failure stands, such as -it is, to be either remembered or forgotten, but hardly to be retrieved. -Such as it is, it is done with, no more to be recalled than the player’s -last night’s performance of Hamlet or Macbeth. Other things will be in -the future: the player is looking forward to to-night; but last -night—that is altogether in the past. - -There is no understanding Seymour Haden’s work, its virtues and -deficiencies, unless this note of his temperament, this characteristic -of his productions, is continually borne in mind. It is the secret of -his especial delight in the art of etching; the secret of the particular -uses to which he has so resolutely applied that art. With the admission -of the characteristic, comes necessarily the admission of the limitation -it suggests. Accustomed to labour and patience, not only in the -preparation for the practice of an art, but in the actual practice of -it, one may possibly be suspicious of the art which substantially -demands that its work shall be done in a day if it is to be done at all. -Such art, one says, forfeits, at all events, its claim to the rank that -is accorded to the _œuvre de longue haleine_, when that is carried to a -successful issue and not to an impotent conclusion. To flicker bravely -for an hour; to burn continuously at a white heat—they are very -different matters. The mental powers which the two acts typify must be -differently valued. And the art that asks, as one of its conditions, -that it shall be swift, not only because swiftness is sometimes -effective, but because the steadiness of sustained effort has a -difficulty of its own—that art, to use an illustration from poetry and -from music, takes up its place, voluntarily, with the lyrists, and with -Schubert, as we knew him of old—foregoes voluntarily all comparison with -the epic, and with Beethoven. - -Well, this remark—a remonstrance we can hardly call it—has undoubtedly -to be accepted. Only it must be laid to Mr. Seymour Haden’s credit that -he has shown a rare sagacity in the choice of his method of expression. -The conditions of the art of etching—a special branch of the engraver’s -art, and not to be considered wholly alone—are fitted precisely to his -temperament, and suit his means to perfection. Etching is qualified -especially to give the fullest effect to the mental impression with the -least possible expenditure of merely tedious work. Etching is for the -vigorous sketch—and it is for the exquisite sketch likewise. It is for -the work in which suggestion may be ample and unstinted, but in which -realisation may, if the artist chooses, hardly be pursued at all. To say -that, has become one of the commonplaces of criticism. We are not all of -us so gifted, however, that commonplaces are to be dispensed with for -the remainder of time. - -Of the great bygone masters of the art, some have pursued it in Mr. -Haden’s way, and others have made it approach more nearly to the work of -the deliberate engraver. Vandyke etched as a speedy and decisive -sketcher; the later and elaborate work added to his plates was added by -other hands, and produced only a monotonous completeness destructive of -the first charm, the charm of the vivid impression. Méryon, whose noble -work Mr. Haden has rightly felt and pronounced to be “not impulsive and -spontaneous, but reflective and constructive, slow and laborious,” used -etching evidently in a different method and for different ends. With -something of the patience of a deliberate line-engraver, he built up his -work, piece by piece and stroke by stroke: touching here, and tinkering -there—he says so himself—and the wonder of it is, that for all his -slowness and delay, the work itself remains simple and broad, and the -poetical motive is held fast to. This Mr. Haden has expressly -recognised. Nothing eluded Méryon. The impressions that with some men -come and go, he pertinaciously retained. Through all mechanical -difficulties, his own quality of concentrativeness preserved to his work -the quality of unity. Then, again, it must be said that the greatest -etcher of old time, Rembrandt, and one of the greatest, Claude, employed -the two methods, and found the art equal to the expression both of the -first fancy and of the realised fact. To see which, one may compare the -first state of Rembrandt’s _Clément de Jonghe_—with its rapid seizure of -the features of a character of extraordinary subtlety—and the _Ephraim -Bonus_, with its deliberate record of face and gesture, dress and -environment; and in Claude the exquisite free sketching in the first -state of _Shepherd and Shepherdess_ with the quite final work of the -second state of _Le Bouvier_. Mr. Haden, then, has full justification -for his view of etching; yet Mr. Haden’s view of etching is not the only -one that can be held with fairness. - -For all but forty years now Seymour Haden has been an etcher, so that we -may naturally see in his work the characteristics of youth and those of -an advanced maturity, in which, nevertheless, the eye is not dimmed nor -the natural fire abated. That is to say, the mass of his labour—over a -hundred and eighty etchings—already affords the opportunity of -comparison between subjects essayed with the careful and delicate -timidity of a student of twenty, and subjects disposed of with the -command and assurance that come of years, of experience, and—may I -add?—of recognition. But in his early time Mr. Haden did but little on -the copper, and then he would have had no reason to resent the title of -“amateur,” now somewhat unreasonably bestowed on a workman who has given -us the _Agamemnon_, the _Sunset on the Thames_, the _Sawley_, and the -_Calais Pier_. Somewhere, perhaps, knocking about the world are the six -little plates, chiefly of Roman subjects, which Mr. Haden painfully and -delicately engraved in the years 1843 and 1844. All that remains of -them, known to the curious in such matters, is a tiny group of -impressions cherished in the upper chambers of a house in Hertford -Street—a scanty barrier, indeed, between these first tentative efforts -and oblivion. - -But in 1858 and 1859 Mr. Haden began to etch seriously; he began to give -up to the practice of this particular way of draughtsmanship a measure -of time that permitted well-addressed efforts and serious -accomplishments. Fine conceptions in all the Arts ask, as their most -essential condition, some leisure of mind, some power of acquisition of -the happy mood in which one sees the world best, and in which one can -labour joyously at passing on the vision. The best Art may be produced -with trouble, but it must be with the “joyful trouble” of Macduff. -Nothing is more marked in the long array of Mr. Haden’s mature work than -the sense of pleasure he has had in doing it. How much, generally, has -it been the result of pleasant impressions! How much the most -satisfactory and sufficient has it been when it has been the most -spontaneous! Compare the absolute unity, the clearly apparent motive, of -such an etching as _Sunset on the Thames_ with the more obscure aim and -more limited achievement of the _Windsor_. The plates of the fruitful -years 1859, 1860, 1863, 1864, and so onward, were done, it seems, under -happy conditions. - -Any one who turns over Seymour Haden’s plates in chronological order, -will find that though, as it chanced, a good many years had passed, yet -very little work in etching had been done before the artist had found -his own method and was wholly himself. There were first the six dainty -little efforts of 1843 and 1844; then, when etching was resumed in -1858—or, rather, when it was for the first time taken to seriously—there -were the plates of _Arthur_, _Dasha_, _A Lady Reading_, and _Amalfi_. In -these he was finding his way; and then, with the first plates of the -following year, his way was found; we have the _Mytton Hall_, the -_Egham_, and the _Water Meadow_, perfectly vigorous, perfectly -suggestive sketches, still unsurpassed. In later years we find a later -manner, a different phase of his talent, a different result of his -experience; but in 1859 he was already, I repeat, entirely himself, and -doing work that is neither strikingly better nor strikingly worse than -the work which has followed it a score of years after. In the work of -1859, and in the work of the last period, there will be found about an -equal measure of beautiful production. In each there will be something -to admire warmly, and something that will leave us indifferent. And in -the etchings of 1859, in the very plates that I have mentioned, there is -already enough to attest the range of the artist’s sympathy with nature -and with picturesque effect. _Mytton Hall_, seen or guessed at through -the gloom of its weird trees, is remarkable for a certain garden -stateliness—a disorder that began in order, a certain dignity of nature -in accord with the curious dignity and quietude of Art. The _Egham_ -subject has the silence of the open country; the _Water Meadow_ is an -artist’s subject quite as peculiarly, for “the eye that sees” is -required most of all when the question is how to find the beautiful in -the apparently commonplace. - -Next year, amongst other good work, we have the sweet little plate of -_Combe Bottom_, which, in a fine impression, more than holds its own -against the _Kensington Gardens_, and gives us at least as much -enjoyment by its excellence of touch as does the more intricate beauty -of the _Shore Mill Pond_, with its foliage so varied and so rich. In the -next year to which any etchings are assigned in Sir William Drake’s -catalogue—a thoroughly systematic book, and done with the aid of much -information from the author of the plates—we find Mr. Haden departing -from his usual habit of recording his impression of nature, for the -object, sometimes not a whit less worthy, of recording his impression of -some chosen piece of master’s art. This is in the year 1865, and the -subject is a rendering of Turner’s drawing of the _Grande Chartreuse_, -and it is an instance of the noble and artistic translation of work to -which a translator may hold himself bound to be faithful. And here is -the proper place, I think, to mention the one such other instance of a -subject inspired, not by nature, but by the art of Turner, which Seymour -Haden’s work affords—the large plate of the _Calais Pier_, done in 1874. -Nothing shows Mr. Haden’s sweep of hand, his masculine command of his -means, better than that. Such an exhibition of spontaneous force is -altogether refreshing. One or two points about it demand to be noted. In -the first place, it makes no pretence, and exhibits no desire, to be a -pure copy. Without throwing any imputation on the admirable craft of the -pure interpreter and simple reproducer who enables us to enjoy so much -of an art that might otherwise never come near to many of us, I may yet -safely say that I feel sure that Mr. Haden had never the faintest -intention of performing for the _Calais Pier_ this copyist’s service. To -him the _Calais Pier_ of Turner—the sombre earlyish work of the master, -now hanging in the National Gallery—was as a real scene. It was not to -be scrupulously imitated; what was to be realised, or what was to be -suggested, was the impression that it made. With a force of expression -peculiar to him, Seymour Haden has succeeded in this aim; but, I think, -he has succeeded best in the rare unpublished state which he knows as -the “first biting,” and next best in the second state—the first state -having some mischief of its own to bear which in the preparatory proofs -had not arisen, and in the second state had ceased. The plate is -arranged now with a ground for mezzotint—it lies awaiting that work—and -if Mr. Haden, having now retraced to the full such steps as may have -been at least partially mistaken, is but master of the new method—can -but apply the mezzotint with anything of that curious facility and -success with which Turner applied it to a few of his plates in _Liber -Studiorum_, in which the professional engraver had no part—then we shall -have a _chef-d’œuvre_ of masculine suggestion which will have been worth -waiting for. - -To go back to the somewhat earlier plates. The _Penton Hook_, which is -one of many wrought in 1864, is another instance—and we have had several -already—of the artist’s singular power in the suggestion of tree form. -Of actual leafage, leafage in detail, he is a less successful -interpreter, as is indeed only natural in an etcher devoted on the whole -to broad effects, looking resolutely at the _ensemble_. Detail is -nothing to him—_ensemble_, balance, is all. But the features of trees, -as growth of trunk and bend of bough reveal them, he gives to us as no -other contemporary etcher can. And in old Art they are less varied in -Claude and in Ruysdael. Mere leafage counted for more with both of -these. And if it is too much to compare Mr. Haden as a draughtsman of -the tree with a master of painting so approved as Crome—the painter -especially of oak and willow—as an etcher of the tree he may yet be -invited to occupy no second place, for Crome’s rare etchings are -remarkable for draughtsmanship chiefly. Crome knew little of technical -processes in etching, and so no full justice can ever be done to his -etched work, which passed, imperfect, out of his own hands, and was then -spoilt in the hands of others—dull, friendly people, who fancied they -knew more than he did of the trick of the craft, but who knew nothing of -the instinct of the art. Crome himself in etching was like a soldier -unequipped. Mr. Haden has a whole armoury of weapons. - -Seymour Haden has been a fisherman; I do not know whether he has been a -sailor. But, at all events, purely rural life and scene, however varied -in kind, are discovered to be insufficient, and the foliage of the -meadow and the waters of the trout stream are often left for the great -sweep of tidal river, the long banks that enclose it, the wide sky that -enlivens every great flat land, and by its infinite mobility and -immeasurable light gives a soul, I always think, to the scenery of the -plain. Then we have _Sunset on the Thames_ (1865), _Erith Marshes_ -(1865), and the _Breaking Up of the Agamemnon_ (1870), the last of them -striking a deep poetic note—that of our associations with an England of -the past that has allowed us the England of to-day—a note struck by -Turner in the _Fighting Téméraire_, and struck so magnificently by -Browning and by Tennyson[1] in verse for which no Englishman can ever be -too thankful. - -Footnote 1: - - I mean, of course, in “Home Thoughts from Abroad,” and in the - “Revenge: a Ballad of the Fleet.” - -In the technique of these later etchings there is, perhaps, no very -noticeable departure from that of the earlier but yet mature work. But -in composition or disposition of form we seem to see an increasing love -of the sense of spaciousness, breadth, potent effect. The work seems, in -these best examples, to become more dramatic and more moving. The hand -demands occasion for the large exercise of its freedom. These -characteristics are very noticeable in the _Sawley Abbey_ of 1873. Nor -are they absent from our _Dusty Millers_. - -[Illustration] - -_Sawley Abbey_ is etched on zinc, a substance of which Mr. Haden has of -late become fond. It affords “a fat line”—a line without rigidity—and so -far it is good. But the practical difficulty with it is that the -particles of iron it contains make it uncertain and tricky, and we may -notice that an etching on zinc is apt to be full of spots and dots. It -succeeds admirably, however, where it does not fail very much. Of course -its frequent failure places it out of the range of the pure copyist who -copies or translates as matter of business. He cannot afford its risk. -In 1877—a year in which Mr. Haden made a number of somewhat undesirable -etchings in Spain, and a more welcome group of sketches in Dorsetshire, -on the downs and the coast—Mr. Haden worked much upon zinc. And it is in -this year that a change that might before have been foreseen is clearly -apparent. Dry point before this had been united with etching, but not -till now have we much of what is wholly dry point; and from this date -the dry-point work is almost, though not altogether, continuous, the -artist having rejoiced, he tells me, in its freedom and rapidity. - -The Dorsetshire etchings, _Windmill Hill_, _Nine Barrow Down_, and the -like, are most of them dry points. In them, though the treatment of -delicate distances is not evaded, there is especial opportunity for -strong and broad effects of light and shade. Perhaps it is to these that -a man travels as his work continues, and as, in continuing, it develops. -At least it may be so in landscape. - -Here, for the present, is arrested the etched work of an artist -thoroughly individual, thoroughly vigorous, but against whom I have -charged, by implication, sometimes a lack of exquisiteness, the only too -frequent but not inevitable drawback of the quality of force. So much -for the work of the hand. For the process of the mind—the character -which sets the hand upon the labour, and pricks it on to the execution -of the aim—the worst has been said also, when I said, at the beginning, -that Mr. Haden lacked that power of extremely prolonged concentration -which produced the epic in literature and the epic in painting. These -two admissions made, there is little of just criticism of Seymour -Haden’s work that must not be admiring and cordial—the record of -enjoyment rather than of dissatisfaction—so much faithful and free -suggestion does the work contain of the impressions that gave rise to -it, so much variety is compassed, so much are we led into unbroken -paths, and so much evidence is there of eager desire to enlarge the -limits of our Art, whether by plunge into a new theme, or by application -of a new process. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER II. - - JULES JACQUEMART. - - -THERE died, in September, 1880, at his mother’s house in the high road -between the Arc de Triomphe and the Bois, a unique artist whose death -was for the most part unobserved by the frequenters of picture -galleries. He had contributed but little to picture galleries. There had -not been given to Jules Jacquemart the pleasure of a very wide -notoriety, but in many ways he was happy, in many fortunate. He was -fortunate, to begin with, in his birth; for though he was born in the -_bourgeoisie_, it was in the cultivated _bourgeoisie_, and it was in the -_bourgeoisie_ of France. His father, Albert Jacquemart, the known -historian of pottery and porcelain, and of ancient and fine furniture, -was of course a faithful and diligent lover of beautiful things, so that -Jules Jacquemart was reared in a house where little was ugly and much -was precious; a house organized, albeit unconsciously, on William -Morris’s admirable plan, “Have nothing in your home that you do not know -to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Thus his own natural -sensitiveness, which he had inherited, was highly cultivated from the -first. From the first he breathed the liberal and refining air of Art. -He was happy in the fact that adequate fortune gave him the liberty, in -health, of choosing his work, and in sickness, of taking his rest. With -comparatively rare exceptions, he did precisely the things which he was -fitted to do, and did them perfectly, and being ill when he had done -them, he betook himself to the exquisite South, where colour is, and -light—the things we long for the most when we are most tired in -cities—and so there came to him towards the end a surprise of pleasure -in so beautiful a world. He was happy in being surrounded all his life -long by passionate affection in the narrow circle of his home. His -mother survives him—the experience of bereavement being hers, when it -would naturally have been his. For himself, he was happier than she, for -he had never suffered any quite irreparable loss. And in one other way -he was probably happy—in that he died in middle age, his work being -entirely done. The years of deterioration and of decay, in which first -the artist does but dully reproduce the spontaneous work of his youth, -and then is sterile altogether—the years in which he is no longer the -fashion at all, but only the landmark or the finger-post of a fashion -that is past—the years when a name once familiar is uttered at rare -intervals and in tones of apology as the name of one whose performance -has never quite equalled the promise he had aforetime given—these years -never came to Jules Jacquemart. He was spared these years. - -But few people care, or are likely to care very much, for the things -which chiefly interested him, and which he reproduced in his art; and -even the care for these things, where it does exist, does, -unfortunately, by no means imply the power to appreciate the art by -which they are retained and diffused. “Still-life,” using the expression -in its broadest sense—the pourtrayal of objects, natural or artificial, -for the objects’ sake, and not as background or accessory—has never been -rated very highly or very widely loved. Here and there a professed -connoisseur has had pleasure from some piece of exquisite workmanship; a -rich man has looked with idly caressing eye upon the skilful record of -his gold plate or of the grapes of his forcing-house. There has been -praise for the adroit Dutchmen, and for Lance and Blaise Desgoffe. But -the public generally—save perhaps in the case of William Hunt, his -birds’ nests and his primroses—has been indifferent to these things, and -often the public has been right in its indifference, for often these -things are done in a poor spirit, a spirit of servile imitation or -servile flattery, with which Art has nothing to do. But there are -exceptions, and there is a better way of looking at these things. -William Hunt was often one of these exceptions; Chardin was always—save -in a rare instance or so of dull pomposity of rendering—Jules -Jacquemart, take him for all in all, was of these exceptions the most -brilliant and the most peculiar. He, in his best art of etching, and his -fellows and forerunners in the art of painting, have done something to -endow the beholders of their work with a new sense, with the capacity -for new experiences of enjoyment—they have pourtrayed not so much matter -as the very soul of matter. They have put matter in its finest light: it -has got new dignity. Chardin did this with his peaches, his pears, his -big coarse bottles, his copper saucepans, his silk-lined caskets. Jules -Jacquemart did it—we shall see in more of detail presently—very -specially with the finer work of artistic men in household matter and -ornament; with his blue and white porcelain, with his polished steel of -chased armour and sword-blade, with his Renaissance mirrors, with his -precious vessels of crystal and jade and jasper. But when he was most -fully himself, his work most characteristic and individual, he shut -himself off from popularity. Even untrained observers could accept the -agile engraver as an interpreter of other men’s pictures—of Meissonier’s -inventions, or Van der Meer’s, or Greuze’s—but they could not accept him -as the interpreter at first hand of the treasures which were so -peculiarly his own that he may almost be said to have discovered them -and their beauty. They were not alive to the wonders that have been done -in the world by the hands of artistic men. How could they be alive to -the wonders of this their reproduction—their translation, rather, and a -very free and personal one—into the subtle lines, the graduated darks, -the soft or sparkling lights, of the artist in etching? - -On September 7th, 1837, Jacquemart was born, in Paris, and the -profession of Art, in one or other of its branches, came naturally to a -man of his race. A short period of practice in draughtsmanship, and only -a small experience of the particular business of etching, sufficed to -make him a master. As time proceeded, he of course developed; he found -new methods—ways not previously known to him. But little of what is -obviously tentative and immature is to be noticed even in his earliest -work. He springs into his art an artist fully armed, like Rembrandt with -the wonderful portrait of his mother “lightly etched.” In 1860, when he -is but twenty-three, he is at work upon the illustrations to his -father’s _Histoire de la Porcelaine_, and though in that publication the -absolute realisation of wonderful matter is not, perhaps, so noteworthy -as in the _Gemmes et Joyaux de la Couronne_—the touch is not so large, -so energetic, and so free—there is evident already the hand of the -delicate artist and the eye that can appreciate and render almost -unconsidered beauties. Exquisite matter and the forms that Art has given -to common things have found their new interpreter. The _Histoire de la -Porcelaine_ contains twenty-six plates, most of which are devoted to -Oriental china, of which the elder Jacquemart possessed a magnificent -collection at a time when the popular rage for “blue and white” was -still unpronounced. Many of Albert Jacquemart’s pieces figure in the -book; they were pieces the son had lived with and which he knew -familiarly. Their charm, their delicacy, he perfectly represented, and -of each individual piece he appreciated the characteristics, passing -too, without sense of difficulty, from the _bizarre_ ornamentation of -the East to the ordered forms and satisfying symmetry which the high -taste of the Renaissance gave to its products. Thus, in the _Histoire de -la Porcelaine_, amongst the quaintly naturalistic decorations from -China, and amongst the ornaments of Sèvres, with their pretty boudoir -graces and airs of light luxury fit for the Marquise of Louis Quinze and -the sleek young _abbé_, her pet and her counsellor, we find, rendered -with just as thorough an appreciation, a _Brocca Italienne_, the Brocca -of the Medicis, of the sixteenth century, slight and tall, where the -lightest of Renaissance forms, the thin and reed-like lines of the -_arabesque_—no mass or splash of colour—is patterned with measured -exactitude, with rhythmic completeness, over the smoothish surface. It -is wonderful how little work there is in the etching, and how much is -suggested. The actual touches are almost as few as those which -Jacquemart employed afterwards in some of his light effects of -rock-crystal, the material which he has interpreted perhaps best of all. -One counts the touches, and one sees how soon and how strangely he has -got the power of suggesting all that he does not actually give, of -suggesting all that is in the object by the little that is in the -etching. On such work may be bestowed, amongst much other praise, that -particular praise which, to fashionable French criticism, delighted -especially with the feats of adroitness, and occupied with the evidence -of the artist’s dexterity, seems the highest—_Il n’y a rien, et il y a -tout._ - -[Illustration] - -Execution so brilliant can hardly also be faultless, and without -mentioning many instances among his earlier work, where the defect is -chiefly noticeable, it may be said that the roundness of round objects -is more than once missing in his etchings. Strange that the very quality -first taught to, and first acquired by, the most ordinary pupil of a -Government School of Art should have been wanting to an artist often as -adroit in his methods as he was individual in his vision! The _Vase de -Vieux Vincennes_, from the collection of M. Léopold Double, is a case to -the point. It has the variety of tone, the seeming fragility of texture -and ornament, the infinity of decoration, the rendering of the subtle -curvature of a flower, and of the transparency of the wing of a passing -insect. It has everything but the roundness—everything but the quality -that is the easiest and the most common. But so curious a deficiency, -occasionally displayed, could not weigh against the amazing evidence of -various cleverness, and Jacquemart was shortly engaged by the publishers -and engaged by the French Government. - -The difference in the commissions accorded by those two—the intelligent -service which the one was able to render to the nation in the act of -setting the artist about his appropriate work, and, broadly speaking, -the hindrance which the other opposed to his individual -development—could nowhere go unnoticed, and least of all could go -unnoticed in a land like ours, too full of a dull pride in _laissez -faire_, in private enterprise, in Government inaction. To the initiative -of the Imperial Government, as Mr. Hamerton well pointed out when he was -appreciating Jacquemart as long as twelve years ago, was due the -undertaking by the artist of the colossal task, by the fulfilment of -which he secured his fame. Moreover, if the Imperial Government had not -been there to do this thing, this thing would never have been done, and -some of the noblest and most intricate objects of Art in the possession -of the State would have gone unrecorded—their beauty unknown and -undiffused. Even as it is, though the task definitely commissioned was -brought to its proper end, a desirable sequel that had been planned -remained untouched. The hand that recorded the ordered grace of -Renaissance ornament would have shown as well as any the intentions of -more modern craftsmen—the decoration of the Eighteenth Century in -France, with its light and luxurious elegance. - -The _Histoire de la Porcelaine_, then—begun in 1860, and published in -1862 by Techener, a steady friend of Jacquemart—was followed in 1864 by -the _Gemmes et Joyaux de la Couronne_. The _Chalcographie_ of the -Louvre—the department which concerns itself with the issue of -commissioned prints—undertook the publication of the _Gemmes et Joyaux_. -In the series there were sixty subjects, or at least sixty plates, for -sometimes Jacquemart, seated by his window in the Louvre (which is -reflected over and over again at every angle in the lustre of the -objects he designed), would etch in one plate the portraits of two -treasures, glad to give “value” to the virtues of the one by -juxtaposition with the virtues of the other; to oppose, say, the -brilliant transparency of the rock-crystal ball to the texture, sombre -and velvety, of the vase of ancient sardonyx. Of all these plates M. -Louis Gonse has given an account, sufficiently detailed for most -people’s purposes, in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ for 1876. The -catalogue of Jacquemart’s etchings there contained was a work of -industry and of very genuine interest on M. Gonse’s part, and its -necessary extent, due to the artist’s own prodigious diligence in work, -sufficiently excuses, for the time at least, an occasional -incompleteness of description, making absolute identification sometimes -a difficult matter. The critical appreciation was warm and intelligent, -and the student of Jacquemart must always be indebted to Gonse. But for -the quite adequate description of work like Jacquemart’s, there was -needed not only the French tongue—the tongue of criticism—but a Gautier -to use it. Only a critic whose intelligence gave form and definiteness -to the impressions of senses preternaturally acute, could have given -quite adequate expression to Jacquemart’s dealings with beautiful -matter—to his easy revelry of colour and light over lines and contours -of selected beauty. Everything that Jacquemart could do in the rendering -of beautiful matter, and of its artistic and appropriate ornament, is -represented in one or other of the varied subjects of the _Gemmes et -Joyaux_, save only his work with delicate china. And the work represents -his strength, and hardly ever betrays his weakness. He was never a -thoroughly trained academical draughtsman. A large and detailed -treatment of the nude figure—any further treatment of it than that -required for the beautiful suggestion of it as it occurs on Renaissance -mirror-frames or in Renaissance porcelains—might have found him -deficient. He had a wonderful feeling for the unbroken flow of its line, -for its suppleness, for the figure’s harmonious movement. Perhaps he was -not the master of its most intricate anatomy; but, on the scale on which -he had to treat it, his suggestion was faultless. By the brief shorthand -of his art in this matter, we are brought back to the old formula of -praise. Here, indeed, if anywhere—_Il n’y a rien, et il y a tout._ - -And as nothing in his etchings is more adroit than his treatment of the -figure, so nothing is more delightful, and, as it were, unexpected. He -feels the intricate unity of its curve and flow, how it gives value by -its happy accidents of line to the fixed and invariable ornament of -Renaissance decoration—an ornament as orderly as well-observed verse, -with its settled form, its repetition, its refrain. I will mention two -or three instances which seem the most notable. One of them occurs in -the drawing of a Renaissance mirror—_Miroir Français du Seizième -Siècle_—elaborately carved, but its chief grace, after all, is in its -fine proportions; not so much in the perfection of the ornament as in -the perfect disposition of it. The absolutely satisfactory filling of a -given space with the enrichments of design, the occupation of the space -without the crowding of it—for that is what is meant by the perfect -disposition of ornament—has always been the problem for the decorative -artist. Recent fashion has insisted, quite sufficiently, that it has -been best solved by the Japanese; and they indeed have solved it, and -sometimes with a singular economy of means, suggesting rather than -achieving the occupation of the space they have worked upon. But the -best Renaissance design has solved the problem quite as well, in -fashions less arbitrary, with rhythm more pronounced, and yet more -subtle, with a precision more exquisite, with a complete comprehension -of the value of quietude, of the importance of rest. If it requires “an -Athenian tribunal” to understand Ingres and Flaxman, it needs, at all -events, some education in beautiful line to understand the art of -Renaissance ornament. Such art Jacquemart of course understood -absolutely, and against its ordered lines the free play of the nude -figure is indicated with touches dainty, faultless, and few. Thus it is, -I say, in the _Miroir Français du Seizième Siècle_. And to the -attraction of the figure has been added almost the attraction of -landscape and landscape atmosphere in the plate No. 27 of the _Gemmes et -Joyaux_, representing scenes from Ovid, as an artist of the Renaissance -had pourtrayed them on the delicate liquid surface of _cristal de -roche_. And, not confining our examination wholly to the _Gemmes et -Joyaux_—of which obviously the mirror just spoken of cannot form a -part—we observe there or elsewhere in Jacquemart’s work how his -treatment of the figure takes constant note of the material in which the -first artist, his original, was working. Is it raised porcelain, for -instance, or soft ivory, or smooth cold bronze, with its less close and -subtle following of the figure’s curves, its certain measure of -angularity in limb and trunk, its many facets, with somewhat marked -transition from one to the other (instead of the unbroken harmony of the -real figure), its occasional flatnesses? If it is this, this is what -Jacquemart gives us in his etchings—not the figure only, but the figure -as it comes to us through the medium of bronze. See, for instance, the -_Vénus Marine_, lying half extended, with slender legs, long a -possession of M. Thiers, I believe. You cannot insist too much on -Jacquemart’s mastery over his material—_cloisonné_, with its many low -tones, its delicate patterning outlined by metal ribs; the coarseness of -rough wood, as in the _Salière de Troyes_; the sharp clear sword-blade, -as the sword of François Premier, the signet’s flatness and delicate -smoothness—_C’est le sinet du Roy Sant Louis_—and the red porphyry, -flaked, as it were, and speckled, of an ancient vase, and the clear soft -unctuous green of jade. - -And as the material is marvellously varied, so are its combinations -curious and wayward. I saw, one autumn, at Lyons, the sombre little -church of Ainay, a Christian edifice built of no Gothic stones, but -placed, already ages ago, on the site of a Roman temple—the temple used, -its dark columns cut across, its black stones rearranged, and so the -church completed—Antiquity pressed into the service of the Middle Age. -Jacquemart, dealing with the precious objects he had to pourtray, came -often upon such strange meetings: an antique vase of sardonyx, say, -infinitely precious, mounted and altered in the twelfth century for the -service of the Mass, and so, beset with gold and jewels, offered by its -possessor to the Abbey of Saint Denis. - -It was not a literal imitation, it must be said again, that Jacquemart -made of these things. These things sat to him for their portraits; he -posed them; he composed them aright. Placed by him in their best lights, -they revealed their finest qualities. He loved an effective contrast of -them, a comely juxtaposition; a legitimate accessory he could not -neglect—that window, by which he sat as he worked, flashed its light -upon a surface that caught its reflection; in so many different ways the -simple expedient helps the task, gives the object roundness, betrays its -lustre. Some people bore hardly on him for the colour, warmth, and life -he introduced into his etchings. They wanted a colder, a more -impersonal, a more precise record. Jacquemart never sacrificed precision -when precision was of the essence of the business, but he did not care -for it for its own sake. And the thing that his first critics blamed him -for doing—the composition of his subject, the rejection of this, the -choice of that, the bestowal of fire and life upon matter dead to the -common eye—is a thing which artists in all Arts have always done, and -will always continue to do, and for this most simple reason, that the -doing of it is Art. - -Not very long after the _Gemmes et Joyaux_ was issued, as we now have -it, the life of Frenchmen was upset by the war. Schemes of work waited -or were abandoned; at last men began, as a distinguished Frenchman at -that time wrote to me, “to rebuild their existence out of the ruins of -the past.” In 1873, Jacquemart, for his part, was at work again on his -own best work of etching. The _Histoire de la Céramique_, a companion to -the _Histoire de la Porcelaine_, was published in that year. To an -earlier period (to 1868) belong the two exquisite plates of the light -porcelain of Valenciennes, executed for Dr. Le Jeal’s monograph on the -history of that fabric. And to 1866 belongs an etching already -familiarly known to the readers of the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ and to -possessors of the first edition of _Etching and Etchers_—the Tripod—a -priceless thing of jasper, set in golden carvings by Gouthière, and now -lodged among the best treasures of the great house in Manchester Square. - -But it is useless to continue further the chronicle of the triumphs that -Jacquemart won in the translation, in his own free fashion of black and -white, of all sorts of beautiful matter. Moreover, in 1873, the year of -the issue of his last important series of plates, Jules Jacquemart, -stationed at Vienna, as one of the jury of the International Exhibition -there, caught a serious illness, a fever of the typhoid kind, and this -left him a delicacy which he could never overcome; and thenceforth his -work was limited. Where it was not a weariness, it had to be little but -a recreation, a comparative pause. That was the origin of his -performances in water colour, undertaken in the South, whither he -repaired at each approach of winter. There remains, then, only to speak -of these drawings and of such of his etched work as consisted in the -popularisation of painted pictures. As a copyist of famous canvasses he -found remunerative and sometimes fame-producing labour. - -As an interpreter of other men’s pictures, it fell to the lot of -Jacquemart, as it generally falls to the lot of professional engravers, -to engrave the most different masters. But with so very personal an -artist as he, the interpretation of so many men, and in so many years, -from 1860, or thereabouts, onwards, could not possibly be always of -equal value. Once or twice he was very strong in the reproduction of the -Dutch portrait painters; but as far as Dutch painting is concerned, he -is strongest of all when he interprets, as in one now celebrated -etching, Jan van der Meer of Delft. _Der Soldat und das lachende -Mädchen_ was one of the most noteworthy pieces in the rich cabinet of M. -Léopold Double. The big and somewhat blustering trooper common in Dutch -Art, sits here engaging the attention of that pointed-faced, subtle, but -vivacious maiden peculiar to Van der Meer. Behind the two, who are -occupied in contented gazing and contented talk, is the bare sunlit -wall, spread only with its map or chart—the Dutchman made his wall as -instructive as Joseph Surface made his screen—and by the side of the -couple, throwing its brilliant, yet modulated light on the woman’s face -and on the background, is the intricately patterned window, the airy -lattice. Rarely was a master’s subject or a master’s method better -interpreted than in this print. Frans Hals once or twice is just as -characteristically rendered. But with these exceptions it is -Jacquemart’s own fellow-countrymen whom he renders the best. Seldom was -finish so free from pettiness or the evidence of effort as it is in the -_Défilé des populations lorraines devant l’Impératrice à Nancy_. _Le -Liseur_ is even finer—Meissonier again; this time a solitary figure, -with bright, soft light from window at the side, as in the Van der Meer -of Delft. The suppleness of Jacquemart’s talent—the happy speed of it, -rather than its patient elaboration—is shown by his renderings of -Greuze, the _Rêve d’amour_, a single head, and _L’Orage_, a sketchy -picture of a young and frightened mother kneeling by her child exposed -to the storm. Greuze, with his cajoling art—which, if one likes, one -must like without respecting—is entirely there. So, too, Fragonard, the -whole ardent and voluptuous soul of him, in _Le Premier Baiser_. Labour -it is possible to give in much greater abundance; but intelligence in -interpretation cannot go any further or do anything more. - -Between the etchings of Jacquemart and his water-colour drawings there -is little affinity. The subjects of the one hardly ever recall the -subjects of the other. The etchings and the water colours have but one -thing in common—an extraordinary lightness of hand. Once, however, the -theme is the same. Jacquemart etched some compositions of flowers; M. -Gonse has praised them very highly: to me, elegant as they are, fragile -of substance and dainty of arrangement, they seem inferior to that -last-century flower-piece which we English are fortunate enough to know -through the exquisite mezzotint of Earlom. But in the occasional -water-colour painting of flowers—especially in the decorative -disposition of them over a surface for ornament—Jacquemart is not easily -surpassed; the lightness and suggestiveness of the work are almost equal -to Fantin’s. A painted fan by Jacquemart, which is retained by M. Petit, -the dealer, is dexterous, yet simple in the highest degree. The theme is -a bough of the apple-tree, where the blossom is pink, white, whiter, -then whitest against the air at the branch’s end. - -But generally his water colour is of landscape, and a record of the -South. Perhaps it is the sunlit and flower-bearing coast, his own refuge -in winter weather. Perhaps, as in a drawing of M. May’s, it is the -mountains behind Mentone—their conformation, colours, and tones, and -their thin wreaths of mist—a drawing which M. May, himself an habitual -mountaineer in those regions, assures me is of the most absolute truth. -Or, perhaps, as in another drawing in the same collection, it is a view -of _Marseilles_; sketchy at first sight, yet with nothing unachieved -that might have helped the effect; not the Marseilles, sunny and -brilliant, parched and southern, of most men’s observation—the -Marseilles even of the great observer, the Marseilles of _Little -Dorrit_—but the busy port, with its ever-shifting life, under an effect -less known; the Marseilles of an overcast morning: all its houses, its -shipping and its quays, grey or green and steel-coloured. Such a work is -a masterpiece, with the great quality of a masterpiece, that you cannot -quickly exhaust the restrained wealth of its learned simplicity. To -speak about it one technical word, we may say that while it belongs by -its frank sketchiness to the earlier order of water-colour art, an art -of rapid effect, as practised best by Dewint and David Cox, it belongs -to the later order—to contemporary art—by its unhesitating employment of -body colour. - -The true source of the diversity of Jacquemart’s efforts, which I have -now made apparent, is perhaps to be found in a vivacity of intellect, a -continual alertness to receive all passing impressions. That alone makes -a variety of interests easy and even necessary. That pushes men to -express themselves in art of every kind, and to be collectors as well as -artists, to possess as well as to create. Jacquemart inherited the -passion of a collector; it was a queer thing that he set himself to -collect. He was a collector of shoe-leather; foot-gear of every sort and -of every time. His father, Albert Jacquemart, had held that to know the -pottery of a nation was to know its history. Jules saw many histories, -of life and travel, and the aims of travel, in the curious objects of -his collection. Their ugliness—what would be to most of us the extreme -distastefulness of them—did not repel him. Nor were his attentions -devoted chiefly to the dainty slippers of a dancer—souvenirs, at all -events, of the art of the ballet, very saleable at fancy fairs of the -theatrical profession. He etched his own boots, tumbled out of the worst -cupboard in the house. He looked at them with affection—_souvenirs de -voyage_. The harmless eccentricity brings down, for a moment, to very -ordinary levels, this watchful and exquisite artist, so devoted -generally to high beauty, so keen to see it. - -What more would he have done had the forty-three years been greatly -prolonged, a spell of life for further work accorded, Hezekiah-like, to -a busy labourer upon whom Death had laid its first warning hand? We -cannot answer the question, but it must have been much, so variously -active was his talent, so fertile his resource. As it is, what may he -hope to live by, now that the most invariably fatal of all forms of -consumption, the most fatal while the least suspected, _la phthisie -laryngée_, has arrested his effort? A very gifted, a singularly agile -and supple translator of painters’ work, he may surely be allowed to be, -and a water-colour artist, perfectly individual, yet hardly actually -great; his strange dexterity of hand at the service of fact, not at the -service of imagination. He recorded nature; he did not exalt or -interpret it. But he interpreted Art. He was alive, more than any one -has been alive before, to all the wonders that have been wrought in the -world by the hands of artistic men. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER III. - - J. A. M. WHISTLER - - -YEARS ago James Whistler was a person of high promise: he has since been -an artist often of agreeable and exquisite, though sometimes of -incomplete and apparently wayward, performance. He has the misfortune to -have been greatly known to a large public as the painter of his least -desirable works, these having reached an easy notoriety, while the -others have thus far too much escaped a general fame. Much of Mr. -Whistler’s art has the interest of originality, and some of it the charm -of beauty; and yet the measure of originality has at times been -over-rated, through the innocent error of the budding amateur, who, in -the earlier stage of his enlightenment, confuses the beginning with the -end, accepts the intention for the adequate fulfilment, and exalts an -adroit sketch into the rank of a permanent picture. _Mr. Irving as -Philip of Spain_—three years ago at the Grosvenor—was a murky caricature -of Velasquez; the master’s sketchiness remained, but his decisiveness -was wanting. And in some of the _Nocturnes_ the absence, not only of -definition, but of gradation, would point to the conclusion that they -are but engaging sketches. In them we look in vain for all the delicate -differences of light and hue which the scenes depicted present. Like the -landscape art of Japan, they are harmonious decorations, and a dozen or -so of such engaging sketches placed in the upper panels of a lofty -apartment would afford a justifiable and welcome alternative even to -noble tapestries or Morris wall-papers. But, on the large scale on which -they are painted—a scale in which their well-considered sketchiness is -carefully emphasized—it is in vain that we endeavour to receive them as -cabinet pictures. They suffer curiously when placed against work not of -course of petty and mechanical finish, but of patient achievement. But -they have merits of their own; nor are their merits too common. So short -a way have they proceeded into the complications of colour, that they -avoid the incompatible: they avoid it cleverly; they say little to the -mind, but they are restful to the eye, in their agreeable simplicity and -limited suggestiveness. They are the record of impressions. So far as -they go, they are right; nay, in one sense they are better than right, -for they are charming. - -And, moreover, there is evidence enough elsewhere that Mr. Whistler, -confined to colour alone, can produce more various and more intricate -harmonies than those of a _Nocturne_ in silver and blue, than those of a -_scherzo_ in blue, or than those even in that fascinating portrait of -Mrs. Meux, in which it was not so much the face as the figure and the -movement that came to be deftly suggested, if hardly elaborately -expressed. A great apartment in the house of Mr. Leyland, which Mr. -Whistler has decorated, has shown that a long and concentrated effort at -the solution of the problems of colour is not beyond the scope of an -artist who has rarely mastered the subtleties of the intricate human -form. It has shown, moreover, that his solution of such problems can be -strikingly original. As a decorative painter—as a painter of large or -brilliant sketches—Mr. Whistler has had few superiors in any time or -land. His skill is sometimes genius here. Why, in the Grosvenor Gallery, -the very year in which the irrepressible painter proffered the most -unwelcome of his _Nocturnes_, there was a quite delightful picture, -suggested, indeed, by Japanese Art, but itself not less subtle than the -art which prompted it—_A Variation in Flesh-colour and Green_—bare-armed -damsels of the farthest East, lounging in attitudes of agreeable -abandonment in some balcony or court open to the genial sunlight and to -the soft air. The damsels—they were not altogether meritorious. The -draughtsmanship displayed in them was anything but “searching.” But the -picture had a quality of cool refreshment such as the gentle colour and -clean-shining material of Luca della Robbia affords to the beholder of -Tuscan Art, as he comes upon Tuscan Art under Tuscan skies. - -The interest of life—the interest of humanity—has confessedly occupied -Mr. Whistler but little; yet in spite of his devotion to the art -qualities of the peacock, it has not been given to him to be quite -indifferent to the race to which he belongs. His portraits, sometimes, -whatever may be his theories, have not been very obviously considered as -arrangements of colour only for colour’s sake. They may even have -profited by the adoption of hues such as suited their themes, and here -Mr. Whistler may have delivered, through his language of colour, a -message which some men would have intrusted to line alone. Anyhow he has -been able to paint with admirable expressiveness a portrait of his -mother, and to have recorded on a doleful canvas the head and figure of -Carlyle, and in both, the simplicity and veracity of effect are things -to be noted. Not indeed that the pictures are without mannerism: the -straight and stiffish disposition of the lines in the first is not so -much a merit as a peculiarity. But a certain dignified quietude and a -certain reticent pathos are apparent in the portrait of the lady, and -the rugged simplicity of Carlyle—a simplicity which his own generation -received with so naive an admiration—is suggested not only with skill of -hand, but with the mental skill that discovers quickly, in presence of a -subject, wherein lies the best opportunity for high success in treating -it. - -But I take it to be admitted by those who do not conclude that the art -is necessarily great which has the misfortune to be unacceptable, that -it is not by his paintings so much as by his etchings that Mr. -Whistler’s name may aspire to live. In painting, his success is -infrequent and it is limited—though when it occurs, its very peculiarity -gives us a keen relish for it—in etching, it is neither limited nor -rare, though of course it is not uninterrupted nor unbroken. In -painting, Mr. Whistler is an impressionist—he is an impressionist in -etching, but etching permits the record of the impression only, while -painting demands at all events the occasional capacity to realise with -weeks of labour what a few hours might happily enough suggest. -Moreover—and the circumstance is odd and noteworthy—it is in his -etchings that Mr. Whistler has reached realisation the best, and he has -reached it, in the earlier Thames-side work of twenty years ago, with no -sacrifice whatever of freedom and of frankness in treatment. His best -painting betrays something of that exquisite sensitiveness, that almost -modern sensitiveness, to pleasurable juxtapositions of delicate colour -which we admire in Orchardson, in Linton, and in Albert Moore; it -betrays sometimes, as in a portrait of Miss Alexander, a deftness of -brushwork, in the wave of a feather, in the curve of a hat, that recalls -for a moment even the great names of Velasquez and of Gainsborough; and -of high art qualities it betrays not much besides—though these, which -are very rare, we are properly grateful for. But the etchings—that is -indeed another matter. They must be considered in detail. No criticism -is wasted that concerns itself carefully with them, and that points out -from the many, which are fair, and which are exquisite, and which are -flagrantly offensive. - -In some of his prints, Mr. Whistler makes good a claim to live by the -side of the finest masters of the etching needle, and a familiarity with -Rembrandt and with Méryon increases rather than lessens our interest in -the American of to-day. But Mr. Whistler has etched too much for his -reputation, or at least has published too much. No one who can look at -work of Art fairly, demands that it shall be faultless; least of all can -that be demanded of work of which the very virtue lies sometimes in its -spontaneousness; but one has good reason to demand that the faults shall -not outweigh the merits. Now in some of Mr. Whistler’s figure-pieces, -executed with the etching-needle, and offered to the public -indiscreetly, the commonness and vulgarity of the person pourtrayed find -no apology in perfection of pourtrayal—the design is uncouth, the -drawing is intolerable, the light and shade an affair of a moment’s -impressiveness, with no subtlety of truth to hold the interest that is -at first aroused. See, as one instance, the etching numbered 3 in Mr. -Thomas’s published catalogue—notice the size of the hands. And see again -No. 56, in which the figure is one vast black triangle, in which there -is apparently not a single quality which work of Art should have. The -portraits of Becquet, the violoncello player, of one Mann, and of one -Davis, have character, with no mannerism, but with a good simplicity of -treatment. But neither face pourtrayed, nor Art pourtraying it, is of a -kind to command a prolonged enjoyment. On the other hand, in some of the -etchings or dry points, not, it seems, included in the catalogue, and in -the refined and sensitive little etching of _Fanny Leyland_ there is -apparent a distinct feeling for grace of contour—for the undulations of -the figure and its softness of modelling. These are but the briefest -sketches—they have a quality of their own. It is not ungenerous to -suggest that carried further they might have failed. For the true genius -of etching is in them as they are. As they are they have not failed. - -Many have been the themes which, in the art of the aquafortist, Mr. -Whistler has essayed. He has essayed landscape; he has drawn a tree in -_Kensington Gardens_, and a tree in the foreground of the _Isle St. -Louis, Paris_; but that tree at least seems of no known form of -vegetable growth—it has the air of an exploding shell. Here and -there—occupied with those juxtapositions of light and shade which -fascinated the masters of Holland—Mr. Whistler has drawn interiors, and -in one of his interiors we note a success second only to the very -highest these Dutchmen attained. This is the interior described as _The -Kitchen_. Only the finest, the most carefully printed impressions -possess the full charm; but when such an impression presents itself to -the eye, the Dutch masters, who have followed most keenly the glow and -the gradation of light on chamber-walls, are seen to be almost rivalled. -The kitchen is a long and narrow room, at the far end of which, away -from the window and the keen light, stand artist and spectator. Farthest -of all from them the light vine leaves are touched in with a grace that -Adrian van Ostade—a master in this matter—would not have excelled. By -the embrasure of the window, just before the great thickness of the -wall, stands a woman, angular, uncomely, of homely build, busied with -“household chares.” In front of her comes the sharp sunlight, striking -the thick wall-side, and lessening as it advances into the shadow and -gloom of the humble room; wavering timidly on the plates of the dresser, -in creeping half gleams which reveal and yet conceal the objects they -fall upon. The meaningless scratch and scrawl of the bare floor in the -foreground is the only fault that at all seriously tells against the -charm of work otherwise beautiful and of keen sensitiveness; and the -case is one in which the merit is so much the greater that the fault may -well be ignored or its presence permitted. Again, _La Vieille aux -Loques_—a weary woman of humblest fortunes and difficult life—shows, I -think, that Mr. Whistler has now and then been inspired by the pathetic -masters of Dutch Art. - -We have seen already that two things have much occupied Mr. Whistler—the -arrangement of colours in their due proportions, the arrangement of -light and shade. And the best results of the life-long study which, by -his own account, he has given to the arrangement of colour are seen in -the work that is purely, or the work that is practically, decorative—the -work that escapes the responsibility of a subject. And the best results -of the study of the arrangements of light and shade are seen in a dozen -etchings, most of which—but not _The Kitchen_ and not the _Vieille aux -Loques_—belong to that series in which the artist has recorded for our -curious pleasure the common features of the shores of the Thames. Here -also there is evident his feeling, not exactly for beauty, but at all -events for quaintness of form, for form that has character. It had -occurred to no one else to draw with realistic fidelity the lines of -wharf and warehouse along the banks of the river; to note down the -pleasant oddities of outline presented by roof and window and crane; to -catch the changes of the grey light as it passed over the front of -Wapping. Mr. Whistler’s figure-drawing, generally defective and always -incomplete, has prevented him from seizing every characteristic of the -sailor-figures that people the port. The absence, seemingly, of any -power such as the great marine painters had, of drawing the forms of -water, whether in a broad and wind-swept tidal river or on the high -seas, has narrowed and limited again the means by which Mr. Whistler has -depicted the scenes “below Bridge.” But his treatment of these scenes is -none the less original and interesting. By wise omission, he has managed -often to retain the sense of the flow of water or its comparative -stillness. Its gentle lapping lifts the keels of the now emptied boats -of his _Billingsgate_. It lies lazy under the dark warehouses of his -_Free Trade Wharf_. It frets and flickers and divides in pleasant light -against the woodwork of the bridge in the larger _Putney_. - -The limitations of Mr. Whistler’s art are very conspicuous in a more -recent experiment than the original Thames-side series—the series of -_Venice_. So evident, indeed, are they in that set that the set has been -undervalued by many amateurs of taste, who have exacted too much that -Mr. Whistler should give them, not what he was best able to see in -Venice, but what cultivated readers of Art history have been most -accustomed to see there. The Venice series is in the etcher’s later -manner—a style in which ever-increasing reliance is placed on the -faculty of slight and suggestive sketching. Now etching, even when -practised with the greatest possible union of fidelity and freshness, is -hardly the appropriate medium for conveying the charm of delicate -architecture. Of such architecture Méryon himself only now and then -essayed to give the charm, and he essayed it, deliberately, at the cost -of abandoning not a little of the etcher’s freedom—he became, for the -nonce at least, a “great original engraver;” he took his art beyond its -habitual bounds. His triumph justified him. But Mr. Whistler, even in -his earlier manhood, when those of the Thames etchings which are the -fullest of detail were wrought with sureness and precision of hand, -never betrayed either the capacity or the will to reproduce the charm of -delicate architecture. Yet in an art to which colour is denied, the -charm of delicate architecture must be the charm of Venice. It remained, -however, for Mr. Whistler to see whether the place had yet some aspects -which his etching could record—an impression, not a reproduction: that -was all that could be looked for. And Mr. Whistler etched his -impressions with curious uncertainty and curious inequality. He was now -adroit, now wavering. He took from London to Venice his happy fashion of -suggesting lapping water. He looked at Venice as a whole, keenly, -delicately, but never in detail—we had bird’s-eye views of it. It had -been interesting to wonder what would be the vision granted to a -fantastic genius of a fantastic city. Well, little new came of it, in -etching—nothing new that was beautiful. Afterwards, in a series of -pastels, it became clear who it was that had seen Venice. It was Mr. -Whistler the exquisite colourist, not the exquisite etcher. - -[Illustration] - -Mr. Whistler’s fame as an aquafortist, then, rests chiefly still on his -Thames-side work; and, even there, less on the faint agreeable sketches -done of later years, though these have their charm, like the better of -his painted _Nocturnes_, than on the work of his first maturity. The -_London Bridge_ and the _Free Trade Wharf_ and one or two _Putneys_—one -of them is in this book—may be named, however, among the happiest -examples of the later art that is specially brief in recording an -impression. The spring of the great arch in _London Bridge_, as seen -from below, from the water-side, is rendered, it seems, with a -suggestion of power in great constructive work, such as is little -visible in the tender handling of so many of the prints of the river. -The _Free Trade Wharf_ is a very exquisite study of gradations of tone -and of the receding line of murky buildings that follows the bend of the -stream. It is, in its best printed impressions, a thing of faultless -delicacy. A third river-piece, not lately done, has been rather lately -retouched—the _Billingsgate: Boats at a Mooring_. In the retouch is an -instance of the successful treatment of a second “state” or even a later -“state” of the plate, and such as should be a warning to the collector -who buys “first states” of everything—the _Liber Studiorum_ included—and -“first states” alone, with dull determination. Of course the true -collector knows better: he knows that the impression is almost all, and -the “state” next to nothing, except as indicating what is probable as to -the condition of the plate, and he must gradually and painfully acquire -the eye to judge of the impression. - -A few years ago Mr. Whistler retouched his _Billingsgate_ for the -proprietors of the _Portfolio_, and the proof impressions of the state -issued by them reach the highest excellence of which the plate has been -capable. Not sheltering itself under the extreme simplicity and -singleness of aim kept so adroitly in the _Free Trade Wharf_ and in the -_London Bridge_, it falls into faults which these avoid. The ghostliness -of the foreground figures demands an ingenious theory for its -justification, and this theory no one has advanced. But the solidity of -the buildings introduced into this plate—the clock-tower and the houses -upon the quay—are a rare achievement in etching. For once the houses are -not drawn, but built, like the houses and the churches and the bridges -of Méryon. The strength of their realisation lends delicacy to the -thin-masted fishing boats with their yet thinner lines of cordage, and -to the distant bridge in the grey mist of London, and to the faint -clouds of the sky. Perhaps yet more delicate than the _Billingsgate_ is -the _Hungerford Bridge_, so small, yet, in a fine proof, so spacious and -airy. It lacks substance, of course, and solidity—and so does the -impression of landscape in a dream. - -Finally, there are the _Thames Police_, the _Tyzack Whiteley_, and the -_Black Lion Wharf_. These, which were executed a score of years since, -are the most varied and complete studies of quaint places now -disappearing—nay, many of them already disappeared—of places with no -beauty that is very old or very graceful, but with interest to the -every-day Londoner and interest, too, to the artist. Here are small -warehouses falling to pieces, or poorly propped even when they were -sketched, and vanished now to make room for a vaster and duller -uniformity of storehouse front. Here are narrow dwelling-houses of our -Georgian days, with here a timber facing and there a quaint bow window, -many-paned—narrow houses of sea-captains, or the riverside tradesfolk, -or of custom-house officials, the upper classes of the Docks and the -East-end. These too have been pressed out of the way by the aggressions -of great commerce, and the varied line that they presented has ceased to -be. Of all these riverside features, _Thames Police_ is an illustration -interesting to-day and valuable to-morrow. And _Black Lion Wharf_ is yet -fuller of happy accident of outline and happy gradation of tone, studied -amongst common things which escape the common eye. - -It is a pleasure to possess such faithful and spirited records of a -departing quaintness, and it is an achievement to have made them. It -would be a pity to remove the grace from the achievement by insisting -that, as in _Nocturne_ and _Arrangement_, the art was burdened by a here -unnecessary theory; that the study of the “arrangement of line and form” -was all, and the interest of the association nothing. When Dickens was -tracing the fortunes of Quilp on Tower Hill, and on that dreary night -when the little monster fell from the wharf into the river, he did not -think only of the cadence of his sentences, or his work would never have -lived, or lived only with the lovers of curious patchwork of mere words. -Perhaps, without his knowing it, some slight imaginative interest in the -lives of Londoners prompted Mr. Whistler, or strengthened his hand, as -he recorded the shabbiness that has a history, the slums of the eastern -suburb, and the prosaic service of the Thames. Here, and often -elsewhere, his work, if it has shown some faults to be forgiven, has -shown, in excellence, qualities that fascinate. The Future will forget -his failures, to which in the Present there has somehow been accorded, -through the activity of friendship or the activity of enmity, a -publicity rarely bestowed upon failures at all; but it will remember the -success of work that is peculiar and personal. These best things we have -dwelt upon are not to be denied that length of days which is the portion -of exquisite Art. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER IV. - - ALPHONSE LEGROS. - - -ANY generation since the brilliant times of Art—since the sixteenth -century in Italy, the seventeenth in Holland, the eighteenth in England -and in France—has had to deem itself fortunate if it has produced three -or four artists of individuality united with large attainment; and it is -much to be surmised that no generation will have greater cause than our -own to think it has done well if it has produced even as many. -Notorieties of the moment may always be counted by the score, but fame -remains so rarely for the most popular, that the serious student of the -work of a master in any art has no reason to question his own judgment -when it points him to admiration, merely because the object of his -admiration is not to be counted among the immediate successes of the -hour. Legros is not an immediate success. He has worked for -five-and-twenty years, and there are intelligent people who see little -in his pictures beyond their first ugliness. Each to his taste—we cannot -always blame them; and Legros has been ugly sometimes gratuitously, -sometimes with wantonness. But Legros is also a very grave and enduring -master, whose work is now full of mistake, and now of power, and now -again is certainly touched with that higher and keener faculty we call -inspiration. - -The etchings of Legros range already, however, over a period of -seven-and-twenty years; and that he began so young, and at a time when -etching was not popular and the art had not become a trade, is a proof -at least of the spontaneity of his pursuit of it. By temperament and -instinct he was as much etcher as painter, perhaps even more. The -process of etching being—always in skilled hands, of course—perhaps the -readiest for the rendering of impressions and the expression of artistic -thought, it is natural that Legros, whose art, whatever it may lack in -immediate attractiveness, is one undoubtedly of impressions and of -thoughts, should have turned to this process. And so well, indeed, has -he increased his command of it—always with reference to his own -particular business, to the order of impressions it is his own task to -convey—that, though there are, indeed, several of his paintings which -have the qualities of a master’s work, we get the best of him in his -etchings. Great is the technical progress he has made in these since -some of the first plates catalogued so well by M. Poulet-Malassis and -Mr. Thibaudeau, but it is not to be imagined that the progress has been -uninterrupted. Incompleteness and uncertainty are still likely to be -visible. His execution, skilful at one time, and entirely responsive to -his desire, is at another time halting, wayward, insufficiently -controlled and directed. Therefore, though, as I say, the execution is -not seldom excellent—economical of means and yet rich in the possession -of various means—it would rarely be in itself the occasion of attracting -notice to his work. With Legros, it is the conception that dominates. -The conception is often such as recalls the highest achievements of Art. - -[Illustration] - -But the imagination of Legros, in virtue of which, quite as much as by -occasional mannerisms of handling, he recalls that older and more -pregnant Art which has well nigh passed from the very ken of the -producers of our own day’s trivial array, is not in any sense derived -from this or that past master; it is charged, on the contrary, in his -most considerable pieces with a serious and pathetic poetry quite his -own. Here and there, indeed, as in one early work—_Procession dans les -Caveaux de Saint-Médard_—it is not imagination at all, as that is -generally understood, but the keen observation of an artist content to -reproduce, that alone is remarkable; and here there is a certain amount -of audacity in the fidelity with which he has rendered the commonplace, -the mean, the narrow faces of a certain section of the Parisian lower -_bourgeoisie_ engaged in devotions which there is no beauty of form or -of thought to make interesting to the beholder. It is a piece of pure -realism—the hideous flounces and more hideous crinolines, the squat -figures, the slop-shop fashions, the common faces empty of records. And -in this pure and unrelieved realism there is a certain value, if there -is no charm. But the pieces to which Legros will owe such fame as the -better-judging connoisseurs and critics shall eventually accord him are -those in which the artistic instinct and desire of beauty, either of -form or of thought, has found some expression. It will be in part by -such masculine, yet refined and graceful, portraits as those of M. Dalou -and Mr. Poynter, such subtle ones as that of Cardinal Manning, such -pathetic ones as that of M. Rodin here, that Legros will stand high. It -will be in part by the etchings in which the pourtrayal of actual life -has been guided by the research for beauty, as, for instance, in the -_Chœur d’une Eglise Espagnole_, where not only is the head firm and -dignified and the lighting more intricate than is usual with this -master, but where the composition of bent figure and curved violoncello -is of great repose and refinement of beauty. A more various specimen of -the same type is to be found in a fine impression of _Les Chantres -Espagnols_. They are eight in the choir of a church—four sit in the -stalls, the others stand, of whom one turns the page of a missal placed -on a lectern. The scene is mostly dark—mostly even very dark—but the -light, by a very skilled treatment of it, falls here and there on -lectern, missal, and hand of the old man sitting in the choir. The -observation of reality in this plate has been at the same time keen and -poetical, for nothing can be truer and nothing more impressive than the -study of old faces out of which so much of the desire of life has gone, -and the study of gestures which are those of hand and will waxing -feeble. Two men, at least, are placed together in a pathetic harmony of -weakness: the drooping hand of one and his drooped head, as he sits in -his long-accustomed place; the open mouth of the other—his mouth opened -with the feebleness of a decayed intelligence, with the slow -understandings of a departing mind. Or, not to insist too much on a -picturesqueness in which pathos predominates, notice, when the occasion -presents itself, the first rendering of the subject known as the -_Lutrin_, with its acolyte of rare youthful dignity; or as an example of -work in which some little beauty of modelling has been sought to be -united even with every-day realism, see the design of the bare knee in -_L’Enfant Prodigue_. - -But where Legros is most apart and alone is, after all, in the subjects -which owe most to the imagination, and of these the very finest are _La -Mort du Vagabond_, _La Mort et le Bûcheron_, and _Le Savant endormi_. -Something of the art that gives interest to these pieces is contained in -the careful persistence with which the etcher brings the realism of -physical ugliness into close contact and contrast with the spiritual and -supernatural. A comely and well-to-do youth slumbering in his chair at -the Marlborough could have no dreams an artist of Legros’s nature would -think worthy of recording, but the ugly votary of science and -intellectual speculation, who sleeps, from sheer weariness, in the -armchair before which are still the implements of his study and -research, has the dignity of strained endeavour; and M. Legros, in -pourtraying him and suggesting the subjects of his dream, has reached an -elevation which separates him from most of his contemporaries, by as -much as the _Melancholia_ of Dürer is separated from the _Melancholia_ -of Beham. _La Mort du Vagabond_ is not a whit less suggestive in its -contrast between the feebleness of the worn-out beggar now stretched out -lonely on the pathside—his head raised, gasping, and his hat knocked -away—and the force and fury of the storm that beats over dead tree and -desolate common. The unity of tragic impression in homely life, -preserved in this plate, will give it a permanent value among the great -things of Art. _La Mort et le Bûcheron_ is more tender, not more nor -less poetical, but less weird; and nothing short of a high and vigorous -imagination could have saved from chance of ridicule, in days in which -the symbolical has long ceased to be an habitual channel of expression, -this etching of the veiled skeleton of Death appearing to the old man -still busy with his field-work, and beckoning him gently, while he, with -simple and ignorant yet not insensitive face, touched with awe and -surprise, looks up under a sudden spell it is vain to hope to cast off, -since for him, however unexpectedly, the hour has plainly come. Of this -very fascinating subject, there exist impressions from two different -plates: one of the plates, and in some respects the better and more -pathetic one—the one in which the figure of Death is gentler and more -persuasive, and in which the face of the woodman is the more mildly -expressive—having suffered an accident after only about a dozen -impressions had been taken from it. The second was then executed, with -something less at first than the success of the earlier one, so that the -almost unique and very rare impressions of the plate—whatever may chance -to be their money value—represent it to the least advantage. It was -retouched and retouched, and at length with more of reward for the -trouble than Legros has generally been able to meet with when -laboriously modifying his work in the attempt to realise his conception -more fully; until at last the enterprising management of _L’Art_ was -enabled to offer its readers for about three shillings a work of art not -rare, indeed, but of exquisite beauty. The success of the first plate, -which the acid had covered in a moment of neglect, had been almost -refound. - -A final word about the landscapes. As a painter of landscape M. Legros -is little known, but there exist, I believe, in London one or two -considerable collections of water colours which exhibit almost -exclusively his art in landscape. As far as the etchings show it at all, -it is of the most account when it is called in for the accompaniment of -one of those impressive and doleful ditties I have just been speaking -of. Sometimes, however, it is good without this mission and -significance, as in the _Pécheur_, where a delicate effect of early -morning is given with exquisite refinement. But at other times, in which -the artist is dealing with landscape charged for him with no especial -meaning, his very observation of it seems to have been lacking in -interest and acuteness, as in the broad slope of grass by the -stream-side in his big print _Les Bûcherons_—a whole surface of ground -that is treated mechanically and without any worthy apprehension. And -yet this print, despite certain unpleasantness, contains in the heads of -the woodcutters some of his finest work. A much more sketchy subject, -_Paysage aux Meules_, has greater unity of impression. Like a good deal -of Legros’s landscape, it is distinctively French, this particular -glimpse of field and farm and rounded hill reminding one of the -wide-stretching uplands of the Haut Boulognais. Other landscapes are of -England. Others, again, are neither of England nor of France, nor of any -land which may be read of in the guide-book or visited by the -enterprising tourist, but of that land alone that rises in the -imagination of artistic men. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - INDEX. - - - BRACQUEMOND. His originality and limitation, p. iii. - - - CLAUDE. His _Bouvier_ and _Shepherd and Shepherdess conversing_, p. 4. - - CROME. His etchings, p. 9. - - - EARLOM. His flower-pieces in mezzotint, p. 25. - - - GONSE. His catalogue of Jacquemart’s etchings, p. 18. - - - HADEN. His quality of vigour, p. 2; - his judgment of Méryon, p. 4; - his earliest etchings, p. 5; - _Mytton Hall_, p. 7; - _Egham_, p. 7; - _Water Meadow_, p. 7; - _Calais Pier_, p. 7; - _Penton Hook_, p. 8; - _Sunset on the Thames_, p. 9; - _Erith Marshes_, p. 9; - _Agamemnon_, p. 10; - _Sawley Abbey_, p. 10; - _Dusty Millers_, p. 10; - his Dorsetshire etchings, p. 11. - - HAMERTON, p. iii. and p. 17. - - - JACQUEMART. His happy circumstances, p. 12; - he renders the soul of matter, p. 14; - his etchings of Oriental and _Sèvres_ porcelain, p. 15; - _Brocca Italienne_, p. 16; - _Vase de Vieux Vincennes_, p. 17; - _Miroir Français_, p. 20; - _Vénus Marine_, p. 21; - _Salière de Troyes_, p. 21; - his etchings after pictures, p. 23; - his flower-pieces, p. 25; - his work in water colour, p. 25; - his concern with Art, not nature, p. 27. - - - LEGROS. Essentially an etcher, p. 41; - his _Procession dans les Caveaux de Saint-Médard_, p. 42; - _Dalou_, p. 42; - _Poynter_, p. 42; - _Manning_, p. 42; - _Rodin_, p. 42; - _Les Chantres Espagnols_, p. 43; - _Le Lutrin_, p. 43; - _La Mort du Vagabond_, p. 44; - _La Mort et le Bûcheron_, p. 44; - his etched landscapes, p. 45. - - - MACBETH, p. iii. - - MÉRYON. His method with architecture, p. 35. - - - REMBRANDT. His _Ephraim Bonus_ and _Clément de Jonghe_, p. 4; - his _Portrait of a woman lightly etched_, p. 15. - - - THIBAUDEAU. His catalogue of Legros’s etchings, p. 41. - - TISSOT, p. iii. - - - VANDYKE. A decisive sketcher, p. 3. - - - WHISTLER. His quality of exquisiteness, p. 28; - his decorative arrangements, p. 29; - painted portraits, p. 30; - his etched portraits, p. 32; - _Fanny Leyland_, p. 33; - _The Kitchen_, p. 33; - _La Vieille aux Loques_, p. 34; - his _Venice_ series, p. 35; - _Free Trade Wharf_, p. 37; - _Billingsgate_, p. 37; - _Hungerford Bridge_, p. 38; - _Thames Police_, p. 38; - _Tyzack Whiteley_, p. 38; - _Black Lion Wharf_, p. 38. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - LONDON - PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, - CITY ROAD. - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - OTHER WORKS BY MR. WEDMORE. - - 7s. 6d. EACH. - - - STUDIES IN ENGLISH ART. - - GAINSBOROUGH, MORLAND, REYNOLDS, FLAXMAN, STOTHARD, - CROME, COTMAN, TURNER, CONSTABLE, DE WINT, DAVID COX, - CRUIKSHANK. - - _Two Volumes._ SECOND EDITION. - - - THE MASTERS OF GENRE PAINTING. - - REMBRANDT, DE HOOGH, NICHOLAS MAES, METSU, TERBURG, - JAN STEEN, WATTEAU, LANCRET, PATER, CHARDIN, FRAGONARD, - HOGARTH, and WILKIE. - - _With Sixteen Illustrations._ - - - PASTORALS OF FRANCE. - - “A LAST LOVE AT PORNIC,” “YVONNE OF CROISIC,” “THE FOUR - BELLS OF CHARTRES.” - - SECOND EDITION. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - _ETCHINGS_ - - ON SALE BY THE FINE ART SOCIETY. - - BY FRANCIS SEYMOUR HADEN. - - - £. s. d. - - A By-road in Tipperary 6 6 0 - - A Water Meadow 4 4 0 - - Amalfi 1 11 6 - - Amstelodam 1 11 6 - - A Cottage Window 2 12 6 - - Battersea 4 4 0 - - Breaking up of the Agamemnon. First 5 5 0 - State £7 7 0 Second State - - Barque Refitting 1 1 0 - - Brentford Ferry 2 12 6 - - By Inveraron 3 3 0 - - Brig at Anchor 3 3 0 - - Cottages behind Horsley’s House 3 3 0 - - Cranbrook 3 3 0 - - Cardigan Bridge 2 12 6 - - Combe Bottom 4 4 0 - - Calais Pier. Second State 21 0 0 - - Do. Small 1 11 6 - - Dusty Millers 3 3 0 - - Evening 1 1 0 - - Early Morning—Richmond Park 2 12 6 - - Egham 2 2 0 - - Egham Lock 2 2 0 - - Erith Marshes 4 4 0 - - Fulham 2 12 6 - - Greenwich 8 8 0 - - Grim Spain—Burgos 3 3 0 - - House of the Smith 2 12 6 - - Hic Terminus Hæret 1 11 6 - - Horsley’s House at Willesley 4 4 0 - - Kensington Gardens. The Large Plate £2 3 3 0 - 12 6 Small Plate - - Kew Side 2 12 6 - - Kilgaren Castle 2 12 6 - - Kenarth 2 12 6 - - Kidwelly Town 2 2 0 - - Mount’s Bay 3 3 0 - - Newcastle in Emlyn 2 12 6 - - O Laborum! 1 11 6 - - Out of Study Window 2 2 0 - - On the Test. First State 5 5 0 - - Purfleet 3 3 0 - - Penton Hook 4 4 0 - - Puff Asleep — - - Railway Encroachment 2 2 0 - - Ruins in Wales 1 11 6 - - Sub Tegmine 3 3 0 - - Sonning Almshouses 2 2 0 - - Shepperton 2 2 0 - - Shere Millpond 5 5 0 - - Sunset on the Thames. First State £3 3 0 3 3 0 - Second State - - Sketch on Back of Zinc Plate 1 11 6 - - Sunset in Ireland 4 4 0 - - Sonning 3 3 0 - - Study of Stems 1 11 6 - - Twickenham Bushes 0 10 6 - - The Mill-Wheel. First State £3 3 0 3 3 0 - Second State - - Thomas Haden of Derby 2 2 0 - - Thames Fishermen 4 4 0 - - The Herd 4 4 0 - - The Two Sheep 1 11 6 - - The Holly Field 1 1 0 - - Twickenham Church 3 3 0 - - Towing-Path. First State £4 4 0 4 4 0 - Second State - - The Three Sisters 4 4 0 - - The Inn at Sawley. (Unfinished) 4 4 0 - - The Grande Chartreuse. (From Drawing by 2 2 0 - Turner) - - The Moat House 3 3 0 - - The Two Asses 1 11 6 - - The Turkish Bath, with One Figure 2 12 6 - - The Turkish Bath, with Two Figures 3 3 0 - - The Assignation 3 3 0 - - Thames Ditton 4 4 0 - - Willow Bank 2 2 0 - - Windmill Hill 3 3 0 - - Windsor 8 8 0 - - Ye Compleate Angler 3 3 0 - - Yacht Tavern, Erith 4 4 0 - - THE VOLUME OF “ÉTUDES” 36 15 0 - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - BY J. A. MCN. WHISTLER. - - -_VENICE._ A SERIES OF TWELVE ETCHINGS. - - Limited to 100 Sets, 50 Guineas the Set; or separately as follows:— - - The Little Venice £4 4 0 - The Two Doorways 6 6 0 - The Beggars 8 8 0 - The Nocturne 5 5 0 - The Doorway 8 8 0 - The River 5 5 0 - The Little Mast 5 5 0 - The Little Lagoon 4 4 0 - The Palaces 8 8 0 - The Mast 5 5 0 - The Traghetto 8 8 0 - The Piazzetta 4 4 0 - - - ------- - - -_SIXTEEN THAMES ETCHINGS._ - - Price 14 Guineas the Set in Portfolio; or separately as follows— - - 1. Black Lion Wharf £1 15 0 - 2. Wapping Wharf 1 11 6 - 3. The Forge 2 2 0 - 4. Old Westminster Bridge 1 5 0 - 5. Wapping 2 12 6 - 6. Old Hungerford 1 11 6 - 7. The Pool 1 11 6 - 8. The Fiddler 1 11 6 - 9. The Limeburners 2 2 0 - 10. The Little Pool 1 5 0 - 11. Eagle Wharf 1 15 0 - 12. Limehouse 1 11 6 - 13. Thames Warehouses 1 5 0 - 14. Millbank 1 5 0 - 15. Early Morning (Battersea) 1 1 0 - 16. Chelsea Bridge and Church 0 10 6 - - - ------- - - - _THE LITTLE LIMEHOUSE._ One Hundred £1 11 6 - Proofs Only - - - _HURLINGHAM._ Sixty Artist’s Proofs £3 3 0 - - - _FULHAM._ Sixty Artist’s Proofs £3 3 0 - - - _PUTNEY._ Sixty Artist’s Proofs £3 3 0 - - - _PUTNEY BRIDGE._ Proofs £6 6 0 - - - _BATTERSEA BRIDGE._ Proofs £6 6 0 - - - ------- - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - BY SAMUEL PALMER. - - -_THE LONELY TOWER._ From “Il Penseroso.” - - ------- - -_THE HERDSMAN’S COTTAGE_ (1850). Plate destroyed. - - ------- - -_THE BELLMAN._ From “Il Penseroso” (1879). Sixty Remarque Proofs (of - which few remain unsold) £4 4 0 - - Plain Impressions 2 2 0 - - ------- - -_THE SKYLARK_ (1850). Plate destroyed £4 4 0 - - ------- - -_CHRISTMAS; or, Folding the Last Sheep._ From Bampfylde’s “Sonnet” - (1850). A few Fine Proofs £3 3 0 - - ------- - -_THE WILLOW_ (1850). Mr. Palmer’s First Etching £0 10 6 - - ------- - -_THE SLEEPING SHEPHERD._ Plate destroyed £4 4 0 - - ------- - -_EARLY MORNING—Opening the Fold._ Remarque Proofs all sold. Artist’s - Proofs £2 2 0 - - ------- - -_THE VINE._ Two Subjects on one Plate. Plate destroyed £5 5 0 - - ------- - -_THE EARLY PLOUGHMAN_ £2 2 0 - - ------- - -_THE HERDSMAN._ Plate destroyed £6 6 0 - - ------- - -_THE MORNING OF LIFE._ Plate destroyed £5 5 0 - - ------- - -_THE RISING MOON._ Plate destroyed £5 5 0 - - ------------------------------------------- - - _In addition to these, a large number of examples of Etchings by J. -C. Hook, R.A., Rajon, Flameng, Unger, Gaillard, Waltner, -Brunet-Debaines, F. Bracquemond, Jacquemart, Chifflart, Daubigny, Le -Rat, Veyrassat, Appian, Tissot, Legros, Herkomer, &c., &c._ - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - _ART BOOKS_ - - PUBLISHED BY THE FINE ART SOCIETY. - - ------- - -NOTE.—The rule of the Society in publishing Books is to make an issue - sufficient only to meet the demand at the time of publication. By so - doing they find the subscribers are materially benefited, as their - books quickly increase in value. - - ------- - -_Mr. Ruskin’s Notes on his Turner Drawings._ Exhibited at The Fine Art - Society’s Galleries, 1878. Illustrated Large-paper Edition, - consisting of 750 copies. Published £2 2s. Edition exhausted. A copy - sold at Christie’s, in April, 1881, for £4 4s. - - The same, small paper, unillustrated, 2s. 6d.[2] - - The type of these editions has been distributed. - - ------- - -_Mr. Ruskin’s Notes on Samuel Prout and William Hunt._ In illustration - of a Loan Collection of Drawings exhibited at The Fine Art Society’s - Galleries in 1879. Edition nearly exhausted. Large Paper, - Illustrated Edition, consisting of 500 copies, £2 2s. - - The same, small paper, unillustrated, 2s. 6d.[2] - - The type of these editions has been distributed. - - ------- - -_Mr. Seymour Haden’s Notes on Etching._ In illustration of the Art, and - of his Collection of Etchings and Engravings of the Old Masters, - exhibited at The Fine Art Society’s Galleries, 1879. Large Paper, - Illustrated Edition, limited to 500 copies, £2 2s. - - The same, small paper, unillustrated, 1s.[2] - - The type of these editions has been distributed. - - ------- - -_J. F. Millet—A Biography by W. E. Henley._ Illustrated with Twenty - Etchings and Woodcuts, reproduced in facsimile. Large-paper Edition, - limited to 500 copies, £1 1s. - - ------- - -_Samuel Palmer: A Biography by his Son, Mr. A. H. Palmer._ Illustrated - with an Original Etching by Samuel Palmer, entitled “Christmas,” and - several Autotypes and Wood Engravings. The Edition will be limited - to 500 copies. Price 31s. 6d. - - [_In the Press._ - - ------- - -_The Year’s Art, 1882._ A concise Epitome of all matters relating to - Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, which have occurred during - the year 1881, in the United Kingdom, together with Information - respecting the events of 1882. By MARCUS B. HUISH. Price 2s. 6d. - - ------- - -_Notes by Mr. F. G. Stephens on a Collection of Drawings and Woodcuts by - Thomas Bewick._ Exhibited at the Fine Art Society’s Rooms, 1880. - Large Paper, Illustrated Edition, limited to 300 copies. Published - at 21s.; price 31s. 6d. Edition exhausted. - - The same, small paper, unillustrated, 1s.[2] - - The type of these editions has been distributed. - - ------- - -_Memoir and Complete Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of Charles - Méryon._ By PHILIP BURTY and MARCUS B. HUISH. 1879. Limited to 125 - copies; type distributed. Published at 16s.; price 21s. - - ------- - - - - -Footnote 2: - - These Handbooks, together with “John Everett Millais, R.A.,” by - Andrew Lang; “Samuel Palmer,” by F. G. Stephens; and “The Sea - Painters,” are sold bound in half calf, complete in one Volume, - price 10s. 6d. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - ● Transcriber’s Notes: - ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. - ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. - ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only - when a predominant form was found in this book. - ○ Text that: - was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR MASTERS OF ETCHING *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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