ART.

MR. ERNEST GEORGE'S ETCHINGS.* THERE is a distinction which is not always sufficiently borne in mind by the artist between subjects which are beautiful in themselves, and those which are beautiful in spite of them- selves—as, for instance, the curvature of a leaf and the line of a breaking wave, and the aspect of the same leaf when it is fallen and withered, or the lines of the same wave when they have been shattered upon a rocky shore. And especially in drawings of architecture is it necessary to keep this distinction in mind, since, if it be at all forgotten, the artist will almost inevitably attempt to combine these contradictory elements to mar the grace which he should preserve, by introducing hints of ruggedness and decay, and weaken the force of things which derive their beauty from their usefulness and their endurance, by covering them with the thin mantle of the picturesque. In other words, in the reproduction of things which are ugly, as in that of those which are beautiful, the chief charm consists in sincerity. For we gain by that in each case the beauty which befits the subject, and if we dare to express with perfectly literal truth any series of facts which have a real connection with, and significance to the life of men, it is almost certain that we shall render them interesting, and in one sense beautiful, since the elements of art and beauty are so closely allied.

These Etchings differ essentially, both in intention and execution, from the ordinary smart work of which the majority of these Art publications chiefly consist ; and it is very necessary to dwell upon this point in order to get a clear idea of either their merits or their defects. For in this instance it is the spirit in which the work has been done which affords its chief value. There is certainly technical accomplishment of a very consider- able extent to be found here, for Mr. George, who is an architect by profession, has been etching, if our memory does not de- ceive us, for about twenty years ; and it must be nearly that

• Etchings of Old London. By Ernest George. Published by the Fine Art Society.

period since Professor Raskin first wrote in praise of the fidelity and the motive of his work. But the technical portion of the Etchings, though sure in its execution, and successful in its manipulation, is not such as to be specially remarkable at the present day, and would scarcely bear com- parison with that of the best modern etchers. Sincere, no doubt, it is, and it must be added with equal certainty that it

is dull. Dull, not from its lack of attainment to realise the author's intention, but dull at fond from the way in which its

author has regarded his subject, and his lack of penetration into its more subtle qualities. This may seem to be a hard say- ing; but Mr. George will perhaps pardon us for noticing this deficiency, since it is one without which his work could hardly possess that purely recording quality which is the one above all others that he seeks to attain. That in these pictures of various parts of "Old London" he has been enabled to give us the per- sonality, the determining point of character, as it were, in each individual place, is untrue, for in this the failure is complete.

Wych Street might be Foubert's Place, Westminster might be Limehouse, for aught of characteristic difference Mr. George has seen between them. The same kind of composition, the same arrangement of light and shade, the same simple relations of tone, are to be found in each and all of these scenes ; and in all, too, is to be found that species of drawing so specially suit- able to an architect's profession, in which accuracy of line, and rightness of perspective play the most prominent parts ; and nothing is conceded to grace, and little is left to the imagination, but all is put down piece by piece, with the result, that in the completed etching, no part is found to be especially pleasing, because no part has been preferred to any other. This is, in the main, true ; but yet, in view "of the fierce light which beats upon a "—critic, it can scarcely be left without qualification.

For in one sense of the word, Mr. George does exercise his right of selection, and exercises it always in the same way. Where his light and shade would be most picturesque, there he puts it ; where he wants a barge, or a waggon, or a figure, in they go; where he can increase the force of his main subject, by inserting cracks in the wall, broken panes of glass, ripples of water, scrabbly trees, and any such details, he avails himself of the chance. So that when we say he is purely recording, we must be understood to mean that his record is influenced by no sufficiently strong personal feeling, either imaginative or sym- pathetic, to in any way obscure his vision, or restrain his hand. His object is to make a picturesque record of the surface aspezt of these old places, and in this he is very frequently successful. But it appears to us that, as far as etching is con- cerned, as distinguished from any other of the engraving processes, the work scarcely merits that high eulogium which Professor Ruskin bestowed upon it. For in truth—and if the truth be hard, we cannot help it—if an etcher is not an artist to the tips of his fingers, he is nothing at all, and his work passes us by quite unheeded. It is just the one process in the whole world in which we can pardon every imperfection, save that of con- ventionality; we do not care in an etching, how little the artist may express the whole character, and the innumerable details of any given scene, so long as he expresses vividly his impression of any single fact connected with it. In saying this, we are not seek- ing to draw any comparison between those who, like Meryon and Macbeth, seek to make a picture with the etching-needle, and those who, like Whistler and Haden, seek to drive home, with partial intensity, some little fact of form, or effect of light and shade; but what we are driving at is this,—that either the one or the other must be sought before an etching can become, in the right sense of the whrd, an etching at all. Now, it is probably the case that Mr. Ruskin's early opinion upon Mr. Ernest George's work was due, in no inconsiderable measure to his opinion of the value of etching "as a blundering art." Probably he thought, that a process which was in his eyes so imperfect was scarcely available for nobler uses than that of preserving with humble faithfulness, the aspect of ancient buildings and the decay or neglected cathedrals ; perhaps it was only that the Professor's sympathies with modern art always ran in the direc- tion of that which sought to copy rather than to originate. In any case, leaving Mr. Rusk in's opinion on one side, we may venture toassert that Mr. George's work possesses neither that delicacy of draughtsmanship, that vividness of impression, nor that subtle sense of what is most beautiful and characteristic in form, -which constitute the chief merits of good etching.

To parody the words of that unfortunate lady who, when being examined by a police magistrate, said, "I may have been unfortunate—but I have always been respectable ;" so we may say of Mr. George's drawings, that whatever may be their defects, they are, at least, free from the charge of impropriety, and any recklessness of intention. He has been peculiarly unfortunate, perhaps, in having published this work at the present time; for, in the face of such etchings of architecture as we have had during the last ten years from the Frenchman, Meryon, the Ameri- can, Whistler, and the German, Axel Haig, we can find little, if anything, to praise in these Etchings save their honesty of inten- tion, their industry, and their sobriety. They are not insolent, like Whistler ; not morbid, like Mellon; not stolid, in a stupendous fashion, like the vast plates which Herr Haig drops. heavily upon the world, but-

" Along the cool sequester'd vale of life,

They keep the noiseless tenour of their way."

Survivals from a bygone time, when the picturesque and the

inoffensive formed the backbone of English art, these quiet pic- tures of Old London are suddenly turned adrift into our midst, much as a well-brought-up lad, in clean blouse and nicely-brushed hair, is left by his mother amid the noisy urchins of a school. One looks at the lad, and wonders what will become of him ; one looks at these Etchings, and wonders what will become of them. Perhaps, like the dog, who was said by his master to be good for rabbits, because every dog was good for something —and he had been tried at everything else in the world—they may find their use in some educational process with which we have not connected them. The "pity of it" is that they are so. good that it wanted, but very little to render them valuable;. and for the lack of that little they are nearly worthless.

Any illustration of these general remarks is difficult either to' render interesting or clearly comprehensible, in the absence of the etchings themselves ; but we will do our best to render two or three points clear to our readers, by a comparison of Mr.. George's work with that of other etchers who have treated the same or similar subjects. Look, for instance, at the etching of "Old Battersea Bridge," and compare it with Whistler's plate of the same subject. Notice how the American artist, with a quarter of the work, has preserved, not only the character of the strong, old timbers, their regular irregularities, their expres- sion of use and strength, even in decay, but has set the whole structure—bright, firm, and massive—in a clearly-expressed atmosphere. Turn to Mr. George's work and notice how at least half the lines add nothing either to the expression or the delicacy of the drawing, but are put in merely to fill up,— how the long series of timbers, through lack of their relative values, stand rather one over the other, than in long sequence of distance ;—how there are in this etching practically only two. gradations of shadow and thickness of line,—the whole of the- bridge being executed in one tone, and the whole of the distance in another, and the two different degrees of intensity running into each other without gradation. The difference between the works is so marked, as to be almost painful; and one is in danger- of losing sight of Mr. George's laborious and earnest accuracy, in view of the deficiency which his work shows, when contrasted with that of an artist who can really draw, not only correctly,, but finely, who has not only mastered the process, but the spirit of etching.

Take another instance. This time, let us compare Mr. George, not with work of a slight, rather suggestive nature, like that of Mr. Whistler's, but with etching which is even more laborious and elaborate than his own. The view of Limehouse is one of the- very best of these etchings of "Old London ;" probably it is the best. It represents a pile of old buildings, some muddy water, and a couple of big coal-barges, moored in front of the picture. It is very carefully drawn, and at first sight one is puzzled to. account for its lack of interest. We see, however, after looking at it for a little while, that its veracity is—if we may use the expression—entirely on the outside. Very possibly these build- ings were all out of the straight, their walls foul, their plaster cracking, their timbers rotting in every direction ; but certainly they were not, as Mr. George has got them, altogether jagged and broken down. Some parts, no doubt, stood still straight and firm, almost as when they were first built. There was- not this uniform, so-called picturesqueness, which makes the etching look as if some one had gone over it with a fork, and scratched the houses, and scrabbled the water, and taken little bits out of the barges, and knocked a few ugly holes in the sky, and, in fact, treated every detail in the architecture, and every' accident of nature, with general discourtesy. At all events, one. says to oneself, those masts in the distance would have

stood up straight, and slim, and strong, against all this general dishevelment ; at all events, those ugly barges in the fore- ground would have cut with clear, black curve the broken piles of the houses, and the turbid eddies of the water ; at all events, that flag-post on the " Harbourmaster Inn" would not have been cut in two with a cannon-shot just before Mr. George began to etch. Of course, all these are small matters, or rather each of them is a small matter ; but it is the sum of many small impressions like these which constitutes the im- pression which any work of art unconsciously produces. For though we cannot express fully in any instance what it is that renders a work of art supremely great, we can in nearly every instance find out, in work of secondary quality, that its de- ficiencies are due to the neglect or the falsification of matters of fact. Well, compare this etching in thought with the celebrated one of the "Morgue," by Charles Meryon. Leave entirely out of account for the moment the personal quality in each, and look simply at the difference between the way in which Meryon —(who, we must remember, is making a literal record of the place, just as Mr. George is doing)—draws a window, compared with that of the way the English artist does the same. It is scarcely possible to express this in words ; but we may give some hint of our meaning by saying, if we were to meet one of Al. Meryon's windows in walking down Fleet Street, we could claim a personal acquaintance with it ; we should be entitled to say "I think we've met before." But in Mr. George's work the broken prettiness of one casement is just the same as that of another ; they are like private soldiers on a great field-day,—their pretty coat takes away their individual character. Just the same is it in such prosaic detail as that of the smoke, which is belching out of the chimney in the French etching, we feel that here it is thick, greasy, and heavy, the foul smoke of a great city tending to make everything as dark as itself; but the pretty little album-smoke of Mr. George's "Lime- house" might come from a cottage chimney on a clear summer evening far away in the heart of the country : it has nothing in common with the life which surrounds it. Hundreds of such details,—literally hundreds,—might be picked out from these etchings ; but it would be merely useless repetition to give more than we have done.