SOURCE OF THE ALBARINE Size of the original print, 73 by 14 inches. From the etching by Adolphe Appian. Of this beautiful plate Philip Gilbert Hamerton writes, "This is one of the most masterly of Appian's Meryon, and Millet; and being a critic whose opinion carried with it great authority, his timely recognition of the art was a powerful factor in its material success. Important assistance of still another kind was given by the plate-printer Auguste Delâtre. And it is a fortunate circumstance that the etchers of the past thirty years had in Delâtre a printer of consummate ability. He was an artist by nature and instinct if not by profession. It was said of the French by Bulwer Lytton, that they are "great in all the arts, but supreme in none. Be this as it may, it is probable that the two greatest names in modern etching are those of an Englishman, and an American domiciled in England, namely, Francis Seymour Haden and James McNeill Whistler. By general consent Seymour Haden ranks as the greatest of modern etchers. How this busy and successful London surgeon took up etching as a pastime, and how with it he has beaten the professional artists on their own ground, is a story too well known to be repeated here. It seems almost a pity that Seymour Haden, in his jealous care for the quality of his work, has seen fit to destroy many of his plates, so as to prevent the possibility of inferior impressions being printed from them in the future. One result is that the proofs have become excessively rare, and those amateurs who have the good fortune to possess some may have the satisfaction of knowing that their value has fully quadrupled since they were first published. The Shere Mill-pond is usually accounted his masterpiece, but a smaller and less known plate entitled the Water Meadow deserves special mention. It represents a level English landscape, with trees in the distance. In this etching the wise "labor of omission" is everywhere apparent, and yet none of the essentials of the scene are lacking. The eminent London critic Frederick Wedmore writes of it as "that unsurpassed masterpiece," and the artist's severest critic-namely, himself—has privately written of it in this characteristic way: "I like this plate, which is saying a great deal." Seymour Haden1 now declares that his work as an etcher is finished and that he will etch no more. He surely has won laurels to rest on. He quit London years ago and retired to his beautiful old mansion in Hampshire, where the writer once found him at work, felling, with his own hands, some of the superfluous timber on the estate, and wielding the axe with a vigor that would have compelled the admiration of Mr. Gladstone himself. Whistler may be called the etchers' etcher. So competent a judge as Storm van's Gravesande said of him, "He is the master of us all." Whistler, though a decided non-conformist in social matters, was, nevertheless, a lion in London society. He loved to befog and mystify the good people of that most conventional capital with his bright and original wit, and it was not easy to know when he was to be taken seriously and when he was only "poking fun." 1 Sir Seymour Haden died June 1, 1910. THE CATHEDRAL OF DORDRECHT, HOLLAND Size of the original print, 18 by 25 inches. From the dry-point by Charles Storm van's Gravesande. This is, perhaps, the most important plate which the artist has produced. It is, in itself, a refutation of the too-sweeping assertion that any plate of large size must, of necessity, be bad as art. |