ART.
ROYAL SOCIETY OF PAINTER-ETCHERS.
IN these times, when the art of photography has been carried to such a pitch, and its effects are to be traced in much of our pictorial art—not always for the best—it is very natural that many of our painters should turn with relief to the etcher's needle and copper, " the art of the original engraver," as a method of expressing their own ideas as purely distinctive as. the other is mechanical An etching is nothing if not individual, and its procedure is as simple and direct in pure etching as a drawing on a piece of paper. A plate of copper coated with wax, a pen-knife, any kind of point, be it needle or scraper, and a bottle of acid ; nothing more in the way of tools is required. The wax or varnish on the plate receives the smallest and most delicate stroke of the needle, and the effect of the acid on the plate denuded of the wax, is felt in proportion as the strokes are deep or shallow.* This biting completed, the plate is ready for printing, and may be used at once, vibrating with life from the hand of the artist, whose personality thus makes itself felt directly, unlike the effect of so many of the processes with which we are, unhappily both for artist and public, overdone at present, and in which the influence of intermediary translation must neces- sarily be and is so strongly felt.
Each etching is thus an original drawing, and may have all the qualities of a first impression so often lost in further carrying out. High finish and retouching do not belong to the province of pure etching. To succeed, it is necessary to know fully beforehand what the final effect is to be, and to give that effect with great decision of hand and sureness of line. Who hesitates is lost " is truer of nothing than of this art, the fascination of which is so well shown by the fact that, from Rembrandt to Goya, and now in our own times, there is hardly a painter of talent who has not at some time tried his hand at it.
In point of interest and in number, the contributions of the President, Mr. Seymour Haden, are alike conspicuous, Nos. 128 to 271 inclusive being from his own hand, not ex- hibited here by his own wish, but by the united desire of his brother-etchers. His contributions show a great familiarity with his medium, and strong perception of the individual genius of etching, which, it appears to us, is that of getting a line. He is particularly successful in his trees and foliage : -" Sub Tegmine " (261) and " A Likely Place for a Salmon " (243) well show these qualities. It is curious to observe the influence of Mr. Whistler on Mr. Haden's work, an influence when, as in this case, taken intelligently, for good ; but as seen in the rather numerous works by Messrs. Sickert and Mempes in this collection, it has a contrary tendency. Anything more unmeaning than some of the frames full of small scribbles with important titles, from the hand of the former, we do not think the long-suffering British public has ever had obtruded upon its notice. Vagueness is not necessarily talent, and vulgarity may be mistaken for originality; and though one of the great merits and powers of etching is to interpret ideas rapidly thrown off, still the lines, few and slight as they may be, must be true and to the point. On the waxed copper every line tells, and there is no correction ; like many other beautiful things, pure etching is at once very simple and very difficult; your line once drawn, it must print, there is no rubbing out. Some of the work shown here has considerable admixture of both aquatint and mezzotint, and if the works are marked as such, there is not much to complain of ; but we doubt whether they should be used in conjunction. Line is the distinguishing quality of pure etching, and it is individual ; mezzotint and aquatint are comparatively mechanical processes, and though admirable and far preferable in their own particular province, it seems somewhat hard that they should be contrasted with the line work.
One of the plates which appeared to stand highest in popular esteem in this exhibition is a hybrid of this kind, etching and aquatint being both, we fancy, used in Mr. Haig's " Transept of Toledo Cathedral" (32). We must confess the result is harmonious, but might have been just as well obtained by pure mezzotint, and with less trouble. It has not, in our opinion, the distinctive qualities of an etching, and yet the simple line is overpowered by the even shadows and tones obtained by the use of the rocker,—i.e., the instrument used in mezzotintiug, which prints over the plate by means of a number of points, and with which it is as much easier to get in a fiat background as it would be with a stump and chalk compared to a pencil. Of pure etchings and dry-point there are, however, many good -examples in the Gallery, both from the President and Messrs. Slocombe, Holloway, Robertson, Ball, and Strang, the last- mentioned having some very serious, scholarly work, in which the influence of Legros and the early German masters is felt. His carefully studied series of eight illustrations to the ballad -of " Death and the Ploughman's Wife," will show what
The acid strong or (Fluted.
can be done on copper with pure line, and is a great contrast to much of the work seen here of the slap-dash sort.
We much like the distance in Mr. Axel Haig's "Floating Market, Stockholm " (122), but the foreground is disagreeable and confused. Mr. George Roller, in his "Reapers," renders very well the look of labour under the baking Andalusian sun, and the women, real and not conventional peasants, are well drawn. Mr. Finnie has some clever mezzotints which are curiously like photogravure ; and Mr. Paton some pleasing small landscapes, of which we particularly liked the " Lily Loch" (340). For the rest of the collection we have no space for individual comment, but can recommend the study of its varied points of interest. In conclusion, we would call our readers' attention to the fact that this, one of the earliest forms of engraving, has precisely those advantages over other pro- cesses that an original text has over a translation.
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