NOTRE DAME DES ANDELYS Size of the original print, 11 by 7 inches. "Notre Dame des Andelys, though not the most instantly engaging, is perhaps the most accomplished etching which the artist has produced." - Martin Hardie. BUTTER MARKET, BRUGES Size of the original print, 6 by 5 inches. From the etchings by Herman A. Webster. These two plates are excellent examples of the artist's broad and balanced disposition of light and shade to give not merely chiaroscuro, but the suggestion of actual color. quotation, it should be that prophecy concerning Ishmael of old-"His hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him." Or did I seek a motto from Shakespeare it should be adapted from a description of Cleopatra: "Age cannot wither him nor custom stale His infinite variety." His abnormal and unparalleled egotism, his sovereign contempt for all other artists, the delight which his own works afforded him, his keen mental alertness and piercing wit, and his irreverence toward all recognized authority, are only a few features of his unique personality. I must refrain from relating many anecdotes about Whistler; for were I to commence I should not know where to stop; but a true picture of the man as drawn by his own hand can be found in his published book, which bears the quaint and felicitous title of "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies." Most of us would much prefer to study and practise the still gentler art of making friends, but that is not what Whistler has written about. Quite the contrary. James Abbott Whistler who changed his name to James McNeill Whistler - was born at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834. He entered the West Point Military Academy as a cadet, but was dismissed for general refractoriness. In 1855 he drifted to Paris, and although he always retained his American citizenship, he never returned to his native land. He died in London in 1903. When urged to revisit America he used to say that he was sorry to go on disappointing a whole continent, but that he could not really go. He retained all his intellectual brightness to the end. About six months before he died he made his last journey to his beloved Paris and while there he visited a princess of the Orleans family. During their conversation her Royal Highness said to Whistler: "You are acquainted with his Majesty King Edward of England?" "Well, no," said Whistler, "not personally." "Well, that is strange," said the great lady, "I was in London a month ago, I visited Buckingham Palace and had an audience with the King, and he told me that he knew you well." "Oh, "Oh," said Whistler, "that was only his brag!" Among the best painter-etchers now living and working I may cite the names of Storm van's Gravesande, the Dutch nobleman and amateur etcher; D. Y. Cameron, the Scottish painter; Anders L. Zorn, the great Swedish painter; Paul Helleu, the Parisian dry-pointer; Herman A. Webster, the Chicago artist now working in Europe, and Thomas R. Manley of New York, whose original landscapes in dry-point are supplemented by two very fine ones which he did from drawings by our lamented American comedian, Joseph Jefferson. On two great American etchers separate chapters are printed in this book; they are Whistler and Joseph Pennell. Mr. and Mrs. Pennell are THE CYPRESS GROVE Size of the original print, 11 by 8 inches. From the etching by D. Shaw MacLaughlan. "In Italy we love above all his Tivoli, his Certosa, Pavia, his Porte Vecchio of Florence, and that admirable plate, The Cypress Grove, which is as seriously established, executed, and rendered bit by bit to the last delicate detail of the foliage, as one of those etchings of the heroic epoch of the Sixteenth Century, when the patience of the engravers was a virtue equal to their passion for the finished work."- Octave Uzanne. |