D. Y. CAMERON

PAINTER-ETCHER

BESIDES the few recognized modern masters

of the art, whose work is of permanent value, it is certain that by far too many men of respectable but not remarkable talent have been producing etchings within the last thirty years. Such etchings, while they cannot really be called bad, yet contain nothing new that is good; nothing that had not already been quite as well done by others.

Twenty years ago such mediocre works were accepted without question. An "etching" (regardless of its quality) was a choice possession and an indication of refined taste on the part of its possessor. But times have changed. The taste, knowledge, and discrimination of the public have greatly advanced, and what passed as being remarkably good then will not be accepted

now.

These things being so, our only warrant in writing of the works of this younger painteretcher is the conviction that we have in Mr. D. Y. Cameron an artist of genuine originality and power; a man who is in no sense an echo of somebody else, but one who sees nature in a way of his own and who has abundant technical skill to express what he sees and feels.

man.

Mr. Cameron is the son of a Scottish clergyHe is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, and probably the youngest member of that distinguished body. Sir Francis Seymour Haden, its president, writes of Mr. Cameron with an enthusiasm which is unusual with him hailing him as a hopeful successor to the masters of the previous generation, and cordially recognizing in his work that precious gift of personality without which all mere technical skill is in vain.

Of his etchings some wise connoisseurs declare that they have never seen and never had enough. There is a good reason for this. It is that Mr. Cameron is, before all, a painter, and that his paintings are highly esteemed; and whenever such a painter spends his time in etching a plate he always makes a pecuniary sacrifice in doing so.

In examining these etchings of his it is not easy to designate his forte. Meryon etched picturesque buildings magnificently, but his portraits are simply bad. Whistler has triumphed in a wider field, but he seems to care nothing for the restful charms of rural landscape- where Seymour Haden is supreme. Mr. Cameron (though we hope his best work is still to be done) already shows himself equally at home when delineating pure landscape, views of buildings and shipping, interiors or portraits. Believing, with Whistler, that "the huge plate is an offense," he confines his work within the modest dimensions so dear to the heart of the collector, and, like Whistler

again, he is, of late, his own printer. The great majority of good etchers do well to have their proofs taken by some good professional printer, simply because such artists do not possess and, never could acquire, the handicraft skill necessary to "pull" a good proof; but on the other hand no etcher who is not able to print his own plates can have his proofs exactly as he wants them and, in consequence, exactly as they should be. Happily for Mr. Cameron, he is endowed with wonderful skill in printing his own works. In the case of a few of them a professional printer would probably say that the shadows are a little too black; but even in such cases we have the satisfaction of knowing that they are exactly as the artist meant them to be. He is fortunate again in having found (we wonder where) a stock of very fine and rare old Dutch paper. Such paper not only takes a finer impression than any other, but it imparts to the proof a tender mellowness of tone that none of modern manufacture can imitate.

It may be that Mr. Cameron may never become a "popular" etcher, and we greatly doubt that his desires run in that direction although he has the example before him of popular etchers who do not scruple to print as many as five hundred "proofs" from a plate. To print such an enormous edition the copper-plate must of course be steel-faced, and Mr. Cameron's artistic conscience disapproves of this steel-facing. He believes that from the bare and perishable copper