ETCHING, BY THEOPHILE CHAUVEL.*
ONE of the characteristics of the growing, if very gradual, popular illumination of the various paths of Art, is that each generation seems to delight in and encourage towards perfection a different subsidiary branch of it, usually in interpretation of the standard, Painting. Although it was only the last century that reared the first minds in England of high artistic power, we have already succeeded in carrying to a very high attainment one or two of these minor methods. We do not intend to record in this article these various processes, each belonging to its period, but may specify the two that stand as yet beyond the rest, namely, the mezzotint engraving from Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the copper- plate engraving by Woollett, from Richard Wilson, preparing the way for the almost perfect engraving of men like Miller, Goodall, and Cousen, from the paintings of Turner. But though the artist is constant to all the methods, as having each its own peculiar power, yet for the public the days of mezzotint were over before those of the finer copper-plate work commenced. We find Turner striving to bring back the mezzotint in some of his publications, and of course, as the methods always interlace to some extent, no exact chronological division would be valuable. At this day, the fine skill of Mr. Cousins, R.A., has resuscitated for a little while the old and beautiful art of mezzotint.
But the forms of Reproductive Art that are the special indices of the public taste of our generation are a new use of wood- engraving, and etching. In wood-engraving of recent years certain results have been attained that will rank very high indeed in any future resume of English Art. We are not forgetting the Bewick gems of long ago, nor the substantial claims of Sir John Gilbert and the other founders of the latest school of wood-engraving, in placing the best wood-work of Frederick Walker in the position • Fourteen Proof Etchings. By Thdophile Chauvel, after Pictures by Old Crams, Rousseau, Corot, Diaz, Boulenger, Daubigny, de Gegerfelt, Van Menke, Jacomin, Veyraseat, Guillemin. London: Libyan's de l'Art, New Bond Street.
of unique and complete art, so far as its limitations permit. A fine drawing on the block by Walker possessed those severe and sparing qualities of line that are seen in the work of men like Leonardo da Vinci or Marc Antonio ; a photograph from the wood-block before it was cut can alone show this very great and educated skill, for its best qualities were lost in the cutting. Pinwell, North, Millais, Small, Fildes, and Mrs. Allingham have also done excellent work occasionally, but the wood-drawing of Du Maurier may be taken as, on the whole, the best type of this kind of work, for its own peculiar purpose ; for while less severe than Walker's, it is often as pure in line, and exhibits even a more cultivated perception titan his of individual traits of human character. Its chief achievement is the skill with which moment- ary turns of movement and expression are caught, throughout that well-known charming catalogue of characters, blooming beauties, paterfamilias, comfortable parson, and all the rest of our acquaint- ance, " aesthetic," pretty, quaint, funny, and vulgar. But the field of wood-drawing is a large one, and includes a quantity of very poor stuff ; but to do justice even to its best practitioners would require more space than we can spare, so that a few representative names are alone given.
The other branch of Art that has lately made its way so rapidly in pleasing public taste is Etching. After Turner's death the days of copperplate were over ; no trained eye can endure the " restless reticulation," to use Mr. Ruskin's expression, of the majority of the highly punctuated plates that yet periodically appear. But etching seemed to offer the method that would translate certain classes of pictures at once with truth and beauty, and form a complement to the powerful help afforded by photography and its modifications. We have now quite a compact body of English etchers, including, among others, the names of Seymour Haden, Samuel Palmer, J. C. Hook, R. S. Chattock, and P. G. Hamerton. But this last champion of etching, who chiefly excels in his more considerable plates, should beware of encouraging the popular taste for little crinkly bits of freehand line work, pretty possibly, but not possessing any sterling qualities, such as compensate for the loss of carefully wrought, though mechanical copper-plate.
In our opinion, the finest results of etching employed to trans- late painting have been reached by M. Bajon, in such plates as. those from Mr. Watts' portraits of Dr. Martineau and Herr Joachim. To possess one of these is like having a miniature Titian gem in black and white ; lustrous in its depths, of cream- like tone in the lights, while the etched lines are touched with steady and severe delicacy. These three qualities seem to epi- tomise the essentials of the technic, in the art of which, as would be expected, Rembrandt was the father. Etching is suitable for contrasts of violent effect, for expressing varied textures, and flickering, wavering, atmospheric effect. It has also, in competent hands, the peculiar power of approaching some of the qualities of rich colour. For subtle and gentle aerial effect it is not suited, and we find Turner never used it, except to make his guiding lines now of deep and rugged strength, and again of the faintest lightness ; all the modelling and shading in his etched plates was done by the mezzotint process, which, after all, seems to be the most complete and generally perfect form of engraving, and to approach nearer Titian's effect than even the etching of Rajon.
When the reader of this notice opens the volume of M. Chauvel, who is a very great etcher, he may perhaps question whether etching be not equal to expressing any subtlety of light and shade. We can but ask him or her to turn to some plates of the Liber ,S'tudiorunt, such as the Ben Arthur, or Xsacus and Hesperia, and it willbe found that each passage of light and shade is not only subtler still, but accurately defined. It is the presence of this power of accurate modelling that strikes the key-note of the difference between two very famous schools of landscape art. Titian and Turner carry out their forms to the subtlest extent, and even then leave mystery its sufficient sphere and perfect effect ; but the " Blottesque " school of Constable never carry out subtlety of form, although they do at times suggest it,—if you go a sufficient distance from their pictures, and possess the faculty of imagination. It is not the desire to be hypercritical that invites this distinction, but the fact that to some minds Turner, North, \\Talker, Hale, and Alfred Hunt appeal with such sufficing power, while Constable, Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Cox, seem artists of a narrower and somewhat lesser order. The figure-painters of France are noted for a literalism of precise definition. Ingres, Getome, Meissonier would make infinity finite, if they could. But the landscapists are all the other way. Their canvases are clouded again and again with every kind of grey blur, black, green, and gold bog, with gnarled trunk and
spotty, flickering sky, or mild, sedgy marsh, peopled with lines of slender poplars. It seems as though the naturally artistic eye of Frenchmen needed some strong antidote to the stretched and vivid anatomism of their great figure- painters, and they certainly possess an adequate corrective in their landscape painters. The reader, however, must not sus- pect us, in making these sweeping remarks upon the French schools, of being caught by that soi-disant " patriotic" spirit that is abroad, and delights in believing all but ourselves to be inherently without principle, for art owns no nationality. It is not necessary to recall what the best artists have ever been so fond of repeating, that what the Greeks did is technically perfect for all races. But in proportion as there seems an ideal to be reached is unfortunately the need of much rejection of the claims of schools, and more criticism of them. Now the power of being at once severely defined as far as truth will allow, and mysterious in that measure without which nothing exists in nature, is the Greek quality. It is well seen in the results of fine photography, which will supply the artists of future ages with a wealth of study and cartoon such as Leonardo spent months in working from nature before he began his picture. We do not believe that the pictorial themes that touch our highest chords can be realised without the presence of this Greek char- acter. Few things could better demonstrate the need of it than the form of a hand. However well you know its anatomy, be your studies and photographs innumerable, yet one day you will be struck suddenly by the peculiar grace due to some seemingly accidental nicety of shade and form of a girl's hand, by chance laid on the table, to vanish again at its next movement ; but if you have an artist's eye, to give you a glimpse of what " idealism " means. Its character could not possibly be better shown than it is in Mr. Leighton's pictures. We venture to say that you will not see in them one limb, not one folded pink finger or calmly moulded arm, bathed in golden light, that does not exhibit one of these rare and strangely attracting aspects or attitudes of changing nature. In the painting of the late Frederick Walker will also be seen this Greek power, employed, however, not so much in recording instantaneous subtlety of line, as in its wonderful realisation of the mystery of gradation of shade and colour.
We have dwelt thus upon the distinctive quality in the work of the Greek sculpture, because when we turn to the interpretation of inanimate nature, we find that fashion tends to set towards, dare we say unreflecting licence of the brush, anti-Greek in all its lines, should there by chance be any in the picture. Now, we trust that we are not making an unpardonable statement in em- phasising our opinion that while the later work of John Brett, with all its subtlety, errs, on the one hand, by bringing into land- scape painting greatly exaggerated distinction, so Constable, Daubigny, Rousseau, Corot, with all their fine qualities (the plate from Corot is a long way the most impressive in this book), on the other hand, quite miss the sublimity that their works might have had, had their mystery been compassed about with exquisite line. From this, we hope our readers may see that we are en- deavouring to point to a school of landscape art than which there can be no better. Comparable with the Greeks alone amongst landscape schools, the Turnerian sky, the Turnerian dawn in the misty woods, always include melodies of intricate line ; every cloud in a crowded cirrus sunset has its own shape, its unique and separate charm. But the dreamy blur of Corot, charming though it be, does not often suggest, to our mind, one severe harmony of line ; nor yet Constable, nor yet Crome, nor yet Cox. We frankly admit that each of these possessed p6wers that Turner never developed, but we dwell upon what seem to us their infinite deficiencies, compared with Turner and the Greeks, because if we had a Rousseau or Constable amongst us now, he would be held up before all our youth, and by acclaim elected into the company of our Academicians ; while we do possess one landscape-painter living amongst us who, in his treatment of external nature, in sympathy with the character of mountain-glen, with its spray and sun-lighted tresses of birch and scarlet-berried mountain-ash, and with all the shifting vision of nature that gave rise to the Greek myths, is Greek, heart and soul, yet is by no means where Constable was.
With regard to the book before us, the etchings in this fine volume, proofs on India paper, by the well-known French painter, Theophile Chauvel, originally appeared in the pages of L'Art, and include examples after a painting by Chauvel himself, ! Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Corot, Van Marcke, and a few others, amongst whom is Old Crome ; to whom, with Constable, as Mr. Can reminds us in his preface, " the landscape school of France always willingly owns a debt of gratitude." Chauvel's skill in render- ing the character of each painter is very marvellous. It would be im- possible to get a more vivid rendering of Rousseau's manner than in the two views in Fontainebleau Forest,—those medleys of flickering, broken light, with clots and patches of shade and sparkling sun- beam in every inch, yet seldom expressing more than lumps of earth, straggling foliage, and broken bits of sky. It will surely not be denied that much of this French landscape painting uses the heroic contrasts of effect upon a few clods and weeds that would never be used by artists like Titian, or Rembrandt, or Turner, except for profoundly stirring dramatic ends. Look, for instance, at the amazing plate by Diaz. At first, one specu- lates on the Gates of Inferno, and begins to unravel their dread aspect from the chaos, when of a sudden it looms out as a soli- tary and ghostly tree in the depths of a wood ; and surely enough, the title of this bit of pseudo-Rembrandtism is the "Trunk of a Tree,"—only that, and nothing more. We have not a word to say against the Art-power, which is great, but we do affirm that the tendency of a great deal of such art as this is to hinder us from training ourselves to feel the sway of those impressions that an equal power might create, when employed on studied and noble themes.
The finer landscapes in the book are those of Van Marcke, Jacomin, Boulenger, Crome, and Corot. This last; the finest in the book, the " Sunset," by Corot, will appeal to students of Turner ; and is pervaded by a calm so 'deep, seemingly made deeper still, by the distant chime of bells, tinkling through the hushed air from that old square church-tower, that is but a faint film far away in the clear gold depth of sunset.
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