REMBRANDT

Reprinted, by permission, from the "Art Review"

EMBRANDT, who was born in Holland in

R 1606 and died there in 1665, may be re

garded as the great representative etcher for all time. He did not originate the process; but, having found it in a crude and undeveloped state, he carried it to a height of perfection which, as a whole, has never since been equaled.

Notwithstanding all the achievements of the modern school in the various details of etching, dry-point, management of the aqua-fortis, methods of printing, and so forth, it is probably true that every one of these refinements of the art was known and practised by Rembrandt himself. He knew well how to vary effects by different styles of printing, was well acquainted with the virtues of Japanese and vergé papers, and on rare occasions he even printed proofs on satin.

From the etcher's point of view all that this great master produced was so right, that now, after the lapse of two centuries, there is probably no etcher living who would not be proud to call himself a "Disciple of Rembrandt." Etching is such a many-sided process that it seems to yield an inexhaustible variety of effects; but to illus

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inches.

Samuel Palmer, the English painter and etcher, was, by nature, a poet. His translation from the Latin, into English verse, of the Eclogues of Virgil, is a standard authority.

THE EARLY PLOUGHMAN

Size of the original print, 5 by 7 inches.

Philip Gilbert Hamerton considers that this is, on the whole, the finest of Palmer's

plates.

COWS IN A POOL

Size of the original print, 5 by 8 inches.

From the original etchings by the French master, Charles Daubigny (1815-1878). Some of Daubigny's paintings were elaborated from his earlier etchings of the same subject.

trate how truly Rembrandt "being dead, yet speaketh," a remarkable experience of the present writer may be related. Years ago, when traveling through continental Europe, it was his habit to carry with him a selection of the etchings of Seymour Haden. When these were shown, for the first time, to some artist or amateur, the comment usually was: "School of Rembrandt." And in later years, after our own American etchers began to produce such fine work, the general remark of these same experts, on seeing some specimens of it, was: "School of Seymour Haden."

After the death of Rembrandt, etching seems, in a great measure, to have declined from its legitimate uses, until it became a mere adjunct to line engraving, the engraver using it for the coarser preliminary work of his plate before finishing with the burin. Many plates were also produced entirely by the etching process; but, as the etched line was made to imitate as closely as possible the formal and rigid appearance of the engraved line, the result was a coarse and inferior substitute for line-engraving. Etching could never, however, achieve the mathematical precision of the burin any more than the burin could give the free and spirited touch of the etchingneedle; and it seems to have been forgotten that this seeming defect was in reality its greatest charm.

A curious instance of this blindness to the artistic charm of the free and frank work of the painter-etcher is seen in the Iconography of Van

Dyck. This great master etched a series of portraits of contemporary artists. He did his work with the greatest economy of labor, but in a superb style. These plates were then (presumably with the consent of Van Dyck) handed over to such excellent engravers as Bolswert, Suyderhoef, and Vorsterman, who finished them with the burin. But before they were thus finished, a few proofs of the pure etchings were taken. And now, after the lapse of two centuries, it has happened to the writer to purchase one of these portraits in both states namely, the unfinished etching as Van Dyck left it, and the same with the engraver's work superadded; but he paid just fourteen hundred times as much for the "unfinished" as for the "finished" print!

This, of course, is an extreme case, and does not demonstrate that all etching is precious and all engraving worthless. Such attempts have been made; but no amount of argument can disprove the fact that all art lovers owe a debt of gratitude to the engravers in line and mezzotint, who have done noble work in the past and who have preserved to the world many masterpieces of which the originals have perished. The likelihood is that in the future the etching-needle will supersede the burin; but this cannot invalidate the value of the old engravings, and the two sister arts should be regarded as being friends, not enemies.

While Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and some others were working in the Netherlands, their great