MR. SEYMOTJR HADEN'S NEW WORK.*
Tins work contains the notes of Mr. Haden upon a recent exhibi- tion of etched work by the great Masters from his own collection, to which was added a series of examples of his own handiwork. But in addition to these notes, he gives us sixteen fa,c-similes of some of the finest of these examples (excepting, perhaps, one or two of the number) ; and these reproductions are practically as- fine in effect as the originals themselves. From this it will be seen that the book is of a very valuable character. Unless the sterling work of men like Albert Diirer, Van Dyk, Meryon, or Hollar is kept well within sight, as is the case in Mr. Haden's book, etching would perhaps reach a straggly period of its ex- istence very rapidly. We do not say this as reflecting upon the powers of our many thoroughly great etchers ; but in order to call to mind how fatal boldness and dash be- come in the history of an art-period, unless the impressive- * About Etchinv. By Mr. Seymour Baden. London: Fine-Art Society, New Bond Street.
nests of their effects are constantly compared with the effects attained by the sure and quiet working of the masters of the past. But all are bound to welcome the fact that etching has kept a very high standard of excellence before it, and appears likely to reach nearer that standard yet. There is an etcher for whose best work we must confess to having an especial predi- lection—Mr. Macbeth—who has realised effects of strength with tender grace, such as may be compared with those seen in the water-colour work of that very great and perfect workman in his line, the late Frederick IN alker. Most of the works of Mr. Herkomer, almost all those of Mr. Haden, and also of Mr. Whist- ler, are things to see. They are original, fine, and free leaves from the mind's sketch-book, that was opened only in presence of poetic nature. Mr. Haden's beautiful plate of the "Moat- House," at Sonning, will repay careful study, for every line tells a fair story, and there is not one too many in it. But then the " naturalistic " branch of etching, though not so intellectually absorbing, is most excellent of its kind.
The strength of the etched line does not, of course, entirely depend upon the artist's eye and nervously adjusted touch. It is simply a fine line eaten out into a deep and rugged trench. Strong, yet true lines, as in the work of Mr. Linley Sambourne (for example, the "High Art-Tide," in Panch,) are well known by artists, as tests of accomplishment. One great reason of the impressiveness of good etching is its conquest of this difficulty. For the lightest feather-stroke will have, if needed, in etching, its contour firmly and unerringly deepened, and, indeed, broadened also, so as to become in the im- pression a line with the grace of freedom and the strength of undeviating rectitude. It might appear to some minds —though, as we think, without reason—that this quality of the etched line removes it from the rank of the very finest intellectual art. But as a matter of fact, the best plastic art has always seized, when it could, upon such (" adventitious ") material aids as the physical properties of its artistic media may afford to it. In the *sage from the soul to its mirroring in the cold earth of a new embodiment, that embodiment cannot dispense with any assistance whatsoever, be it due to "biting," or" body-colour," or " gold-tone," or even. at times the much cursed "brown tree" itself. Every abstract restriction of material fetters the painter, already heavily handi- capped.
Among the finer specimens here are the great "Knight and Death" of Diirer, and also his " Coat-of-Arms, with the Skull." The first of these is, no doubt, a standard of perfect human art, in its own way. Its popular interpretation, the rider's patience in presence of the phantoms of approaching death, is probably erroneous. The Knight is intended for one of the fierce and cruel rulers who darken the page of the history of the great artistic age. The tuft on his spear, for soaking up the blood, takes the place of his knightly banner, as Mr. Ruskin has pointed out. He considers "that later critics are right in sup- posing it to be the often-mentioned 'Nemesis ;' and that the patience and victory are meant to be Death's and the Fiends', not the, rider's." The figure, however, is grandly proportioned,. though the visage is terrible and cunning, and the armour is of the most costly and perfect description. The noble horse, calmly striding on, has a weird and dogged expression, as though doomed to serve a hard-hearted master. This expression also is most painfully intensified in the dog cantering along by his side. But description halts when we try to indicate the character of Death's horse, which droops his head as if under vivisection ; and of Death himself, wrapped up among his pallid clothes. As to the rabid-looking fiend, with the cock's- combs about him, "he must be seen to be believed." But the plate is, perhaps, as full of suggestion of the deepest meta- physical kind as any existing work of art ; nor is the dim glimmer of peace and beauty, and its relation to the tragedy, left out of it, Tho "Coat-of-Arms, with the Skull," finished just ten years before the "Knight and Death," perhaps illustrates a passage in the same career. In order to pass away from the gloomy side of our subject, for whose expression etching has
great power, we turn to the dark and gruesome " Morgue " of Charles Meryon. The story of the artist's life is an exception- ally painful one, even for the life of one who sacrificed it in the cause of art, So long as he lived, the works of Meryon Passed almost unnoticed at the Salon, and at last were rejected altogether there, only to take their place with the most sought-for work of modern art, when his judges had time to turn round a bit, immediately after his death in a mad-house. But the French Art reputation was than so great as the exemplar of artistic fashion, that the verdict of its leaders was practically unquestioned. A great school may well rest content with the second place, if fashion was the road leading to a deterioration of aim and of judgment. Meryon's is an exceptional ease among such examples of injustice. He is Considered now a kind of one-sided Phidicts of etching. His works were worthy to be hung in the same building with thosie of Ingres, G6ricault, Girodel, and Flanclrin. Infinitely sensitive, and kindly, and chivalrous though the French always remain, their fashionable dictator- ship in art produced some results that cannot be looked upon with hope, to take a very cheerful view of the matter. The regions of the fantastic, of the vulgarly terrible, of the exalt& vanish into smoke before these solitary works of Meryon.
Beham's portrait—the Emperor Charles V.—is also very fine indeed, in something the same way. Mr. Haden has done the greatest service by reprinting for us such acmes of art-work as this and others here. The two heads by Van Dyk, for instance, are fine examples of his subtle and incisive hand, which was so easy, and yet so deliberate and certain. In the extunple of
Claude we find a quite different aim. It is, of course, a reduc- tion from the great panorama of nature, and every straining
for textures and atmosphere, and organic differences of scale and of material, feel themselves into being, as all the truest and fairest landscape imagery in miniature must, One important reason, which will not fade away upon analysis, to account for landscape occupying so distinct a branch in art, is the fact of the tremendous scope of nature ; and the toil, analogous to that of the highest workman's, entailed by the presence of her majesty of line and mystery, in.
a few feet of canvas or inches of water-colour. Of course, the inch of paper that holds twenty miles of sky is a more respon- sible and precious surface than an inch of foreground ; though, ought we not to add, "Pace Mr. Ruskin ?"
The more impressive work of modern landscape art—especially the work of Tumor, who„as Sir Coutts Lindsay insisted, stands alone—though fairly companioned by several others, speaks, it is needless to say, with a very deep meaning. By its means, the miles of extraordinary majesty of the evening sky receive the justice and the homage which their claims demand, and by- and-by will take upon. them the halo of the ancient poetic life of art, But in a case demanding the intellectual subtlety needful to limn "the awful rose of dawn," we find some glib attempts in rose, and blue, and amber, And it is our satis- faction in these attempts, and our consequent blindness to
natural majesty, that offends deeply feeling and exact know- ledge. Mr. Haden and the etchers are among those who flock up to the rescue, in these days ; as a greater than these planted his standard in the past.
Previous page
