Art UK THE ETCHINGSOF \ CHARLES i MERYONi y I "I ■If i JH THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE LIBRARY UNivEKarrY of California LOS ANGELES THE ETCHINGS OF CHARLES MERYON THE ETCHINGS OF CHARLES MERYON BY CAMPBELL DODGSON, M.A., C.B.E. KEEPER OF THE PRINTS AND DRAWINGS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM EDITED BY GEOFFREY HOLME PUBLISHED BY '< THE STUDIO," LTD., LONDON MCMXXI Printed by Herbert Reiach, Ltd., 9 King Street, Covent Garden, London. Photogravure plates engraved and printed by A. Alexander (5^• Sons, Ltd., 15 Westmoreland Plact, City Road, London. Art L CONTENTS ARTICLES Introduction Early Life The Early Etchings The Etchings of Paris . Other Etchings of the 'Fifties The Late Etchings List of Meryon's Etchings LIST OF ETCHINGS REPRODUCED.* Charles Meryon. By Felix Bracquemond 9 x Titre des Eaux-fortes sur Paris (D. 17), 6i x a\ Dedicace a Reynier Nooms, dit Zeeman (D.18), 6if x 2| in. Ancienne Porte du Palais de Justice (D. 19), third state 3-1-6 X 3f in. . . . Armes Sj^mboliques de la Ville de Paris (D.21), third state, 5f X 4f in. . Le Stryge (D.23), eighth state, 6| x 51 in. Le Petit Pont (D.24), fifth state, lOi x 7i in. . L'Arche du Pont Notre-Dame (D.25), third state 6 x 7| in. La Galerie Notre-Dame (D.26), third state, \\\ x 6f| in. La Rue des Mauvais Garpons (D.27), third state, 5 x 3| La Tour de L'Horloge {D.28), third state, loA x 71 in Tourelle de la Rue de la Tixeranderie (D.29), second 5|in. ^Hin. Page I 3 6 8 20 22 24 Plate I 2 in. state. 9f 5-A- in. 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 II 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 In each case the dimensions given are those of the original plate, and not of the subject or engraved surface. Saint-Etienne-du-Mont (D.30), fifth state 9f x 5i in. La Pompe Notre-Dame (D.31), ninth state, 6| x gf in. La Petite Pompe (D.32), second state, 4i x z\ in. Le Pont-Neuf (D.33), eighth state, 7-A- ^ 7i in. Le Pont-au-Change (D.34), second state, 6i x i3iV in. Le Pont-au-Change (D. 34), ninth state, 6i x iSjig- in. . L'Esperance (D.35), (Vers destines a accompagner Le Pont-au-Change), 2i x 5 in. La Morgue (D.36), third state, 9i x si in. L'Hotellerie de la Mort (D.37), two plates each 4| x if in L'Abside de Notre-Dame de Paris (D.38), fourth state, 6i X 111 in. . . . . . . 22 Tombeau de Moliere (D.40), second state, 2f x 2f in . 23 Charles Meryon, 1858. By Leopold Flameng, 8| x lof in. 24 Tourelle de la Rue de L'Ecole-de-Medecine (D.41), sixth state, 8f x 5-^s in. . . . .25 Tourelle de la Rue de L'Ecole-de-Medecine (D.41), ninth state, 8| x 5-1-6 in. . . . .26 Rue des Chantres (D.42), first state, iif x 5| in. . 27 Rue des Chantres (D. 42), fourth state, iifxsfin. . 28 College Henri IV. (D. 43), sixth state, ii|xi8|in. . 29 Bain-froid Chevrier (D.44), fourth state, 5} x 5f in. . 30 Le Ministere de la Marine (D.45), first state, 6| x 5| in- 31 Le Ministere de la Marine (D.45), fifth state, fif x 5| in. 32 LePont-Neuf etlaSamaritaine(D.46), third state, 5H x 8 in. 33 Le Pont-au-Change vers 1784, d'apres Nicolle (D. 47), third state, SA x gf in. . . . . 34 La Salle des Pas-perdus a I'ancien Palais-de- Justice (D.48), fourth state, io| x 17} in. . . . 35 Rue Pirouette aux Halles (D.49), third state, 6i x 4i^ in. 36 Partie de la Cite vers la Fin du XVII« Siecle (D.51), seventh state, 6x i2|in. . . . . 37 L'Ancien Louvre, d'apres une peinture de Zeeman (D.53), fifth state, 6f X loi in. . . . 38 Porte d'un ancien Convent a Bourges {D.54), second state, 6| X 4f in. . . . . . 39 Rue des Toiles a Bourges (D.55), fifth state, 81x41 in. . 40 Ancienne Habitation a Bourges (D.56), fourth state 41 91 X 5i^ in. Entree du Convent des Capucins a Athenes (D.61), third state, 7| x 5 in. . . . . 42 Nouvelle-Caledonie. Grande case indigene sur le Chemin de Ballade a Poepo (D.67), fourth state, ^51 X 9|in. . . . . . .43 Oceanic, Peche aux Palmes (D.68), fourth state, 6i x i3i in. 44 La Chaumiere du Colon (D.72), third state, 3i x 3 in. . 45 Pro-volant des lies Mulgrave (D.74), fifth state, 5| x 3i in. 46 L. J. -Marie Bizeul (D.83), fourth state. 6+ x 4| in. . 47 vi PREFACE No modern author could write on Meryon without acknow- ledging in the amplest terms, as I do, his indebtedness to M. Loys Delteil's monograph on this great etcher in his Peintre- Graveur Illustre (1907). The biography which precedes it, and the quotations which it gives from Baudelaire and Burty, and from Meryon 's own comments on what Burty wrote about Meryon, make M. Delteil's volume much more than a cata- logue. The other books that I have chiefly consulted are Burty 's Catalogue of Meryon, translated by M. B. Huish (1879), and Aglaiis Bouvenne's " Notes et Souvenirs sur Charles Meryon " (1883.) I have had no access to original documents, except the chief documents of all, the etchings themselves, or to books not generally known ; but there may be readers, perhaps, who will welcome a brief account in Eng- lish of Meryon 's career, an estimate of his rank as an etcher, and comments on all of his etchings that they have any need to know and admire. The originals of all the etchings repro- duced in the plates, except the portrait by Bracquemond, are in the British Museum. • c. d. 5 September, 192 1. Erratum. — Page 23, line 18 from top, for " February 4th/' read " February 14th." Vll THE ETCHINGS OF CHARLES MERYON INTRODUCTION. CENTURY has passed since the birth of Meryon, a circumstance which excuses, if it does not actually demand, a survey in retro- spect of the great etcher's work and the growth of his renown. There is no indica- tion, it must be said at once, that the lapse of time has weakened in any degree the sure fabric of his fame. About no other modern etcher, save Whistler, is there an equal consensus of opinion among those whose opinion counts, that he ranks among the great masters of his art. Whistler himself was a dissentient ; he spoke one day to Mr. Wedmore of " Meryon, whom you have taken out of his comfortable place." Without insinuating that he was jealous of a confrere with whom he was forced to share the honour of a Wedmore catalogue, it may be remarked that the utterances of such a lover of paradox as Whistler need not be taken too seriously. Nor is an artist always the best judge of a fellow artist who pursues very different aims from his own. Meryon 's reputation, though it is ungrudgingly admitted and admired by most etchers of to-day and yesterday, was estab- lished by the critics and collectors of a generation now ex- tinct. Philippe Burty, who published the first critical article on Meryon and the first catalogue of his etchings in the Gazette des Beaux- Arts of 1863, was the first to discern clearly and to proclaim to the world his peculiar genius. Charles Baudelaire and Theophile Gautier added their words of praise and the Galerie Notre-Dame evoked the enthusiasm of Vic- tor Hugo. Bracquemond, by twelve years his junior in age but his contemporary in the practice and mastery of etching, gave him all the support of his appreciation, and there was a small enlightened circle of collectors, including Wasset of the War Office, Niel of the Ministry of the Interior, Meryon 's former shipmate De Salicis, the English etcher Seymour Haden, and a few others who saw the great merit of his work 1 INTRODUCTION from the first. But on the whole his reception in France was cool and discouraging ; academic opinion at the time was un- favourable to original etching. The editor of the Gazette des Beaw^-^rfs grudged admission to Burty's essay and asked, if two articles were to be devoted to a modern etcher, how many would be needed for Raphael. His Galerie Notre-Dame was refused by the Salon in 1853, and though many of his Paris etchings were exhibited there, they gained no prize. The public collections did not acquire his works and it was not till 1866 that Burty induced the Chalcographie Imperiale at the Louvre to commission and publish one of his plates, L'Ancien Louvre, after Zeeman (plate 38). The stories told of the pitiful sums that he used to accept for proofs of his finest etchings, a franc and a half or two francs, sometimes, seem almost incred- ible now, when such proofs sell for hundreds of pounds. In a pathetic letter which he addressed in 1854 to the Minister of the Interior, appealing to him for the support which he could not obtain from the public, he announced his intention of pro- ducing a set of ten etchings of Bourges, and charging fifteen francs for the set. He actually sold the whole series of his masterpieces, "Eaux-fortes sur Paris, ' 'as a set, for twenty-five or thirty francs. They sold very slowly indeed. A receipt is extant from him for twenty-five francs paid by Baron Pichon in 1866, twelve years after the publication of the set, for " une suite de vues anciennes de Paris, gravees par moi a I'eau-forte, intitulees Eaux-fortes sur Paris." It was not till 1910 that the first collective exhibition of Meryon's etched work was held in Paris, at the Galerie De- vambez. In England, where his fame was spread by Seymour Haden, Philip Gilbert Hamerton and Wedmore, Meryon's reputation grew more rapidly, at least after his death. The great French private collections of his etchings crossed the Channel, Burty 's being sold in 1876, and the year 1879, eleven years after Meryon's death, witnessed the publication of two different English catalogues of his etchings and the holding of a fine exhibition of his etchings and drawings at the Burling- 2 INTRODUCTION ton Fine Arts Club, to which the Rev. J.J. Hey wood was the largest contributor. Much later, in 1902, an important exhi- bition was held by Messrs. Obach & Co., while Messrs. P. and D. Colnaghi & Co., arranged another very fine Meryon exhibition in 1919. The British Museum, fortunately, owes to the foresight of a former Keeper of Prints the early forma- tion of a magnificent, though not complete, collection of Meryon, to which additions are still occasionally made, though they must needs be few now that a further stage in the migra- tion of fine proofs is in progress and not the Channel only, but the Atlantic, parts them from their pays d'origine. The National Gallery of Scotland is fortunate in having obtained, by the gift of Mrs. G. R. Halkett, a small selection of very fine proof s of Meryon etchings, but Edinburgh's gain is far less than was Glasgow's loss by the sale, in 1916, of the collec- tion of Mr. B, B. Macgeorge, which was undoubtedly the most complete work of Meryon ever brought together, containing, as it did, not merely almost every etching by the master in almost every state, but also a large number of his original drawings for the etchings of Paris. The year 1916 was an un- favourable time for acquiring such a valuable oeiivre for any national or municipal museum, and the Macgeorge col- lection went to America and was dispersed, only a small num-. ber of proofs remaining in, or returning to, this country, where, I suppose, no one collection of importance still remains except that of the British Museum. A Meryon exhibition is being held at the Museum this autumn to celebrate the centenary of the artist's birth. EARLY LIFE The story of Meryon 's life has often been told, but those who do not know it may welcome a brief recapitulation of it here, and indeed some such narrative is needed for the comprehen- sion of his work, which becomes much more interesting when something is known of the period and circumstances in which it was produced. Meryon was bom in Paris on November 3 EARLY LIFE 23rd, 182 1, as the natural son of Dr. Charles Lewis Meryon, an English doctor, formerly physician and secretary to Lady Hester Stanhope, and an opera dancer, Pierre-Narcisse Chas- poux, aged twenty-eight, known as Mme. Gentil, who already had a daughter by an English peer. It was not till August 9th, 1824, that Dr. Meryon made a formal recogni- tion of paternity and left a sum of money, on leaving France, for his son's education. His mother brought him up with tender care, but he inherited from her apparently the mental disease with which he was afterwards afflicted ; she died, out of her mind, in 1837 or 1838. At the age of five, under the name of Charles Gentil, he went to school at Passy, where he received some elementary lessons in drawing . A very childish drawing of houses, trees and a well, in red and black chalk, of which at a later period some one made a woodcut, is in the British Museum ; by internal evidence one may judge it to be earlier than the elementary lessons. He went to Marseilles, Hyeres, and to Italy, as far as Pisa and Leghorn ; then returned to Paris till he made up his mind to go into the Navy, and, in 1837, entered the naval school at Brest. It was then that he adopted his father's name of Meryon. Leaving the naval school in 1839, he sailed from Toulon in October in the Alger for the Levant, and was trans- ferred at Smyrna, as a first-class cadet, to the Monte- hello. He visited Argos, the tomb of Agamemnon and the lion gate at Mycenae, and at Athens made drawings of the frieze of the Temple of Theseus and of the Choragic Monu- ment of Lysicrates which appears in his etching of the Con- vent of the French Capuchins at Athens, 1854 (plate 42). On his return to Toulon he had further lessons in drawing. In 1842 he went to sea again, being gazetted as " enseigne de vaisseau " to the corvette Le Rhin, which cruised about New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the islands of the Pacific. The fruits of these years of travel in Oceania may be seen in a number of etchings which he made in later life (Delteil 63- 74). A jnultitude of pencil sketches made on his travels re- 4 EARLY LIFE mained in his family's possession till 1904, when they were given to the British Museum by Mr. Lewis Meryon. They include drawings of his shipmates, of native houses, fetishes and boats, palm trees and other vegetation, studies of skies and sunsets, with notes of colour, sketches of the flight of the alba- tross, drawings of fish and other fauna of the Pacific, and last, but not least, the original drawings for Le malingre Crypto- game (D. 66) and Tete de chien de la Nouvelle-Hollande (D. 65), the ship's pet whose queer habits and tragic death by falling overboard before Meryon 's eyes are graphically de- scribed in one of his letters quoted at length in Burty 's memoir. Long afterwards, in conversations with Burty, Meryon used to say how his thoughts dwelt on the rocky coast of New Cale- donia, where " he had met a race of savages, handsome, heroic, intelligent, where he had breathed an air overladen with balm, where, if he could, he should like one day to return to finish life free and happy." On the return of Le Rhin in 1846 Meryon received six months' leave and returned to Paris. He had scruples about his constitution being strong enough for the profession of a sailor ; he neglected to ask for an extension of his leave, and in the end his resignation was accepted and he left the Service on September 17th, 1846. He was then in possession of a sum of 20,000 francs left to him by his mother. He took a studio and had lessons from a painter named Philippe. He has recorded his enthusiasm at this time for the pictures of Delacroix, Decamps and Hogarth, whose work he had seen during a short visit to England. After some experiments in allegory, inspired by the proclamation of the republic at the February revolution, he abandoned painting for engraving, and entered the studio of the etcher, Eugene Blery, in 1848. A circumstance which afiEected this decision was the discovery that his eyesight sufiFered from the defect known as Daltonism, a partial colour-blindness. THE EARLY ETCHINGS Blery as an etcher has little interest for us, but he was suffi- ciently skilled to impart in six months a sound technique to a pupil, whose interest in the art was fostered by the study of old etchings and especially those of the Dutch etcher of architec- ture and marine subjects, Renier Zeeman (1623-1663), which he used to pick up for a few sous in the boxes outside the printsellers' shops. Meryon's first etching of all was a head of Christ, founded on a miniature after Philippe de Cham- paigne ; the only impression known of this etching is in the Howard Mansfield collection at New York. During the years 1849-50 he produced a number of copies after Loutherbourg, Salvator Rosa, Karel du Jardin and others, but Zeeman fasci- nated him above all in the double capacity of an etcher of marines and of views of old Paris, and it was from his style that he learnt most. While still with Blery his mind is said to have been slightly unhinged by an unfortunate love affair with the daughter of a restaurant keeper, w^ho would have nothing to say to him. In solitary wanderings about the old streets of Paris and meditations in his garret in the Rue St. Etienne-du-Mont, he formed plans for his series of etchings of old Paris and began to make studies for them. As early as 1850 one of these masterly plates, Le Petit Pont (plate 7), was finished. In making his studies of old houses and churches, Meryon seldom made a complete drawing on the spot. He would go every day at the same hour and make minutely finished studies of details on small bits of paper, which he either stuck together or made another drawing from them. He used an exceedingly sharp, hard pencil ; the astonishing fineness of the line that he produced with it may be well seen in two early drawings of Rouen Cathedral from the Seine in the British Museum, which also possesses some of the drawings of archi- tecture at Bourges, a place which first fascinated him on a visit made about 1848. In drawing architecture Meryon always worked upwards from the bottom of his object, saying that buildings were begun from the foundation and the artist 6 THE EARLY ETCHINGS should follow the same method as the builder. In the same way he would draw men from the feet upwards, saying that they must always be planted firmly on their feet before they began to do anything. Le Petit Pont well illustrates another peculiarity of his practice in drawing architecture. He deliberately renounced any competition with the camera of the photographer, and claimed the right to arrange the dif- ferent parts of what he drew in the manner best calculated to convey a certain impression, while preserving the utmost exactness in the representation of detail in each part. It has been observed, by those who know the spot well, that the towers of Notre-Dame, which dominate the whole composi- tion, are much too high in the etching in regard to their actual dimensions and to the laws of perspective. After taking a drawing from very low down, near the edge of the water, Meryon drew the towers again from the level of the street, as the passer-by would habitually see them, and fitted this draw- ing with great skill into the former one, constructing by this combination a composition which produced the desired effect of impressive and majestic height, all the details being abso- lutely accurate, though on reflection it might be discovered that they could not all be seen at once. Le Petit Pont is the first of his mature works, and marks an astonishing advance upon the exercises in copying other etchers which, with the exception of a few important por- traits, are all that had preceded it. " Unimportant," his own portrait, seated before an easel, could never have been, at least as a document, though it may have been immature, but we cannot judge of its quality, for Meryon destroyed it and pre- served no proofs, and we only know of its existence from his own statement recorded by Burty. The only proof of his por- trait of Eugene Blery was destroyed by Blery 's wife because she did not like it. Thus the only portrait of his quite early time which is actually extant is that of Edmond de Courtives, and of this only one impression, formerly in the Macgeorge collection, can actually be traced. It is a little medallion con- 7 THE EARLY ETCHINGS taining the head, reduced from an etching which according to Meryon's own account was originally a half length, in which a violin and some chemical apparatus were introduced beside the sitter. It was an original etching, based on a drawing from life b^^ Meryon himself. All the other portraits are of much later date, one belonging to the year 1856, the rest to 1861 or 1862 (plate 47), None of them are original etchings; they are founded on drawings by others, old prints or photographs, in one case on a medallion by David d' Angers; they are quite insignificant and we shall have no need to mention them again. The other etchings of 1849-50 would have no interest for us if anyone else but Meryon had etched them. It is only the four oblong subjects of Paris and its vicinity after Zeeman that count for some- thing more, because they show very plainly on what Meryon formed his taste, and anticipate, in the proportions and orc?on- nance of the plate and in the treatment of river boats and of the little figures on the banks of the Seine that we see in Le Pavilion de Mademoiselle and in La Riviere de Seine et V angle du Mail, habits that we shall soon come to regard, when we consider the original etchings of Paris, as specially character- istic of Meryon himself. THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS But when we come to Le Petit Pont (plate 7), etched in the same year as these copies after Zeeman, and exhibited in the Salon of 1850, we are aware of quite a different vision, a dif- ferent order of intellect, as well as greater perfection of tech- nical skill. It is becoming difficult for us after the lapse of seventy years, in which so many other etchers have been working on Meryon's lines, to realise how new, how epoch- making in the strict sense of the word, was such an etching as Le Petit Pont in 1850. There had been fine engravers and etchers of architecture before Meryon ; there had been Hol- lar, there had been Canale, Piranesi and Rossini. But they in their different degrees were facile and fluent,rhetorical,diff use, 8 THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS commercial, in comparison with the severe, tense, concen- trated style of Meryon. In his " Eaux-Fortes sur Paris," which extend in date from 1850 to 1854, he achieved a body of work which led the way in what is called the modern revival of etching and in its own special style has never been surpassed, though other etchers have triumphed in other styles of etch- ing which were entirely outside Meryon 's limited compass. Not only was he in advance of all the other notable etchers of his generation, but he had finished this series of masterpieces before the others had begun to produce anything of import- ance. Millet began to etch in 1855 ; Whistler's Paris set dates from 1858 ; Haden, though he had etched in the forties, did little that really counts till about 1858. Jacque and Daubigny were working before Meryon, but they are hardly in the same class. It was consonant with Meryon 's brooding, introspec- tive temperament that he took the work of etching very seriously. He acquired a profound knowledge of the tech- nique of the art and applied it, in the case of all his important etchings, with conscientious thoroughness. Disdaining any- thing like a sketchy treatment of his subject, he built up the whole design laboriously, painfully, with tireless persever- ance, after making the most conscientious studies of detail. He was, in fact, by habit and temperament more an engraver than an etcher, though he used the etching process instead of attacking the copper with a burin. But nothing that I have yet said explains what there is in Mer^'on that makes us regard him as a great artist. Any etcher might have taken all these pains and yet remained to the end nothing but an industrious plodder. It was the combination, in Meryon, of this high degree of mechanical skill with a fine instinct for design and the poet's vision which was still more specially his prerogative, that places him in a different cate- gory from a Lalanne, a Martial-Potemont or an Edwin Edwards. The old streets of Paris were not, for him, merely storehouses of picturesque motives, structures composed of walls and porticoes, gables and spires, on which the sun 9 THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS arranged at different times of day different patterns of light and shade ; they were that, certainly, and his etcher's eye, trained to observe niceties of gradation between black and white rather than varieties of actual colour, took full advant- age of their hitherto unexplored wealth of suggestion. Leav- ing all metaphor out of court, his actual eyesight was astonish- ingly keen ; he saw details of architecture with the naked eye which would be revealed to average persons only by a tele- scope. But to him the streets of Paris were haunted places, peopled with ghosts and wet with tears. Their atmosphere was infected by old crimes and miseries and sins. The lonely meditations of a brain already morbid, affected even when he was a boy by the discovery that he was a bastard, suspicious in later life and shrinking from human intercourse, were re- flected in the melancholy which seems, to sympathetic observers, to brood over the dark narrow streets, survivors of a mediaeval Paris, much of which was doomed to destruction in the great demolitions and reconstructions of the Second Empire. But Meryon did not trust entirely to sympathetic observation to discern his meaning. He expressed himself directly in verses, which were meant to be published, and in some cases actually were published, along with the architec- tural etchings, to explain what reflections the subjects aroused in the etcher's mind. Sometimes these verses were etched at the foot of the subject itself, as in the fourth state of Le Stryge ; more often they were etched on separate plates, in cursive writing, with little ornaments and rather elaborate capitals, the stanzas carefully spaced in a decorative arrangement. They may be seen reproduced, so far as they were actually etched, in M. Loys Delteil's catalogue, but the whole of Meryon's verses, including some that he did not etch, are collected and presented in a more legible form, being printed with type, in Aglaiis Bouvenne's " Notes et Souvenirs sur Charles Meryon." They are jerky, queer and amateurish verses, but they throw so much light on Meryon's mentality that they must not be neglected by any student of his art. 10 " THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS It is time that we returned to the Paris etchings themselves, of which only one, Le Petit Pont (plate 7), has hitherto been mentioned in our survey of the progress of Meryon's work. The complete series as he published them himself, in three parts, between 1852 and 1854, consists of twenty-two etchings,' preceded by a portrait of Meryon etched by Bracquemond ; not the half-length portrait, seated, with the hand resting on the back of a chair (plate i)," which was etched in 1853 (Beraldi 77), but the head in profile to the left (Beraldi 78), in imita- tion of an antique sculpture in relief, with the legend, com- posed and etched by Meryon himself, in 1854 : Messire Bracquemond A peint en cette image Le sombre Meryon Au grotesque visage. Of the "cahiers" which were issued of the Paris set, contain- ing this portrait, probably not one remains to-day intact. The twenty-two etchings by Meryon himself consisted of an etched title (plate 2) printed on grey, brown, blue or green paper (in which, it should be noticed, as well as in the address etched at the foot of each plate, the etcher calls himself Meryon, not Meryon), four small preliminary etchings, twelve important subjects, which bear numbers in the final state, which was not printed till 1861 and then in an edition of thirty only, and five more plates which were never numbered, and which, as re- gards size at least, must be counted as "minor" works, though 1 A list of the contents of the set," Eaux-Fortes sur Paris," may be found useful ; it is as follows : — A. Meryon*s portrait by Bracquemond. 1. The title. 12. Tourelle de la rue de la Tix^randerie 2. Dedication to R. Zeeman. (numbered 6). 3. Porte du Palais de Justice (frontispiece). J^. St. Etienne-du-Mont (numbered 7) 4 Verses " Ou'Sme Dure P^misse " ^*- ^^ ^""P^ Notre-Dame (numbered 8). 4. Verses, yuame pure gemisse. jg La Petite Pompe. 5. Arms of the City of Pans. Ig Le Pont-Neuf (numbered 9). 6. Le Stryge (numbered 1). 17_ Le Pont-au-Change (numbered 10). 7. Le Petit Pont (numbered 2). jg. Verses, " L'Esp^rance." 8. L'Arche du Pont Notre-Dame (numbered 3). 19 La Morgue (numbered 11). 0. La Galerie Notre-Dame (numbered 4). 20. Verses, " L'H6tellerie de la Mort." 10. La Rue des Mauvais Gardens. 21. L'Abside de Notre-Dame (numbered 12). 11. La Tour de I'Horloge (numbered 5). 22. Tombeau de Moli^re. ^ This portrait is extremely rare, as only ten impressions were taken ; it has been reproduced by heliogravure. The impression reproduced in this book is in the collection of the author. 11 THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS they include La Rue des Mciivais Gargons (plate lo), a plate to which posterity attaches a high value, if Meryon did not do so himself. Some of the minor etchings are so extremely rare that they must have been printed in small numbers and not generally included in the " cahier. " Several rather important etchings of Paris were done at a later date, and did not form part of the " Eaux-Fortes sur Paris "set. The dedication to Zeeman, " jDeintre des matelots " (plate 3), is in verses which express in simple language Meryon 's love and admiration for the master who had inspired his early eflforts, concluding with the words : — Mon maitre et matelot, Renier toi que j 'aime Commeun autre moi-meme A re voir, a bientot. The frontispiece (plate 4), a round composition in which a devil carrying a great scroll hovers against a lurid sky over the Gothic gateway of the Palais de Justice, is a sinister design. The Tomb of Moliere (plate 23), tail-piece to the set, was etched on the same plate, and a proof exists from the un- divided copper containing both designs. The verses following the frontispiece are a comment on the latter, and express Merj'on's conviction that the city of Paris, " Paris le Paradis des amours et des Ris, " is possessed by a " noir Diabloton, malicieux, mutin," fostered by science, and that this " mechant animal, Origine du mal " cannot be exorcised without razing the city to the ground. These etched verses are very rare. The symbolical coat of arms of the city of Paris (plate 5) is another of the minor pieces inserted in 1854, when the set was being completed. Then follows Le Stryge (plate 6), etched in 1853, one of the most original and impressive of all Meryon 's etchings. His elbows propped on the ledge of the balcony, one of the Gothic monsters of the western towers of Notre-Dame broods with head in hands and lolling tongue, an enigmatical and evil expression in his eye, over the city of Paris seen far below, with the Tour St. Jacques as the most 12 THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS prominent object. Jackdaws circle in the air about the towers, and graven beneath the oval, in one state only of the plate, is the sinister couplet : — Insatiable vampire, Teternelle luxure Sur la grande cite convoite sa pature. The delicacy of the work, in fine proofs, is be^'ond the power of any mechanical process to reproduce. Two pencil studies, formerlj^ in the Macgeorge collection, are very interesting as showing Meryon's conscientious method of preparation for this plate. He made one very highly finished drawing of all that is seen of the city of Paris down below, reserving blank spaces for the Stryge and for the Tour St. Jacques — there is also a trial state of the plate, showing that all this portion of the design was etched first, directly from this drawing — and then another equally finished drawing of the tower and the stone monster by themselves, with all the rest of the subject drawn in outline, probably traced from the first drawing. A drawing by Meryon of anotherof the monsters of Notre Dame, a monkey, with a set of verses written beside it, is reproduced in Bouvenne's " Notes et Souvenirs. " Then follows Le Petit Pont (plate 7), in which the twin towers of Notre-Dame, beauti- fully placed on the plate, surmount the long rows of houses on the Quai du Marche Neuf and dominate the whole composi- tion. The outline drawing which Meryon made from the level of the shore, showing the towers very much lower, is re- produced in M. Delteil's catalogue. L'Arche du Pont Notre- Dame (plate 8), especially in the beautiful proofs on green paper, is one of the most charming of the whole series and free from any eccentricity. La Galerie Notre-Dame (plate 9) is a very beautiful rendering of Gothic architecture, and a most delicate study of effects of light, direct and reflected. The impressions vary much, some being rich in tone and rather veiled, others clean wiped and of a silvery clearness. The highly finished drawing w^hich Meryon etched almost in fac- simile, only adding clouds in the sky, was in the Macgeorge collection. 13 THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS La Rue des Mauvais Gargons (plate lo), which formed the cul-de-lampe or tail-piece of the first livraison of "Eaux-Fortes sur Paris," has always impressed modern observers as one of the most powerful and impressive of the etchings, fraught with mystery, enigmatic, suggestive of long past tragedies. " Quel mortel habitait, " are the verses etched on the building, * ' En ce gite si sombre ? Qui done la se cachait Dans la nuit et dans 1 'ombre?" Was it Virtue, in silent poverty; was it Crime ? No answer to the riddle is attempted. The street exists no longer. La Tour de VHorloge (plate ii) was drawn and etched in 1852 while alterations were in progress which materially altered the appearance of Le Chatelet. This plate has always struck me as being a very straightforward and masterly portrait of a building, but without so much personal expression as Meryon generally contrived to impart to his other etchings. An edi- tion of 600 copies of Delteil's sixth state was published in LMrtiste in 1858, and it was only after this large edition had been struck off that Meryon made a rather important change in the plate, which appears in the last two states, by making rays of light issue, somewhat unaccountably, from the win- dows between the high square tower and the first of the round ones. Tourelle de la rue de la Tixeranderie (plate 12), also etched in 1852, was drawn just before its demolition. The etching gives a very beautiful effect of sunlight on a most picturesque old house, with the lower part of its turret wreathed in the foliage of a creeper ; but the mediaeval knight in helm and plumes, who rides along the street, and the nude woman standing in the doorway (in the first state) are curious additions to the scene. The latter figure was retouched in the final state. Saint-Etienne-du-Mont (plate 13), also etched in 1852, is similar in style, as in dimensions, to the last subject. It gives, again, a beautiful effect of sunlight, and the architec- tural details of the church are shown with an exquisite clear- ness. The little figures are lively and interesting, but in the state here reproduced a blemish may be noticed ; the raised 14 THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS arms of a workman on the scaffolding, near the gas lamp on the right, have been effaced, to be restored in the next state. La Pompe Notre-Dame (plate 14), another plate belonging to the prolific year 1852, is one of the most picturesque etchings of the series. The proportions of the various masses of archi- tecture to the oblong plate are perfectly satisfying, and the eye delights in the intricate lines, alternately light and dark, of the two wooden structures that rise out of the water like thepilesof a " lake dwelling." Meryon excuses himself, in an interesting letter, for making the towers of Notre-Dame higher than they should be, as actually seen from this point of view: " Les Tours saillent aussi un peu plus que dans la realite ; mais je considere que ce sont licenses permises, puis- que c'est pour ainsi dire dans ce sens que travaille I'esprit, sitot quel'objetquil'a frappea disparu de devant les yeux " (quoted by M. Toys Delteil from a letter to Paul Mantzj. This plate was published in an edition of 600 by L' Artiste in 1858 ; before that time the building itself had been demolished. Meryon alludes to the impending demolition in the rather insignificant little design, with some doggerel verses etched within it, known as La Petite Pompe (plate 15), of 1854. Le Pont-Neuf (plate 16), an etching of 1853, is the ninth of the set as Meryon numbered it. It is a solid, masterly piece of architectural etching about which there is not much to be said. The light falling on the truncated turrets of the bridge and reflected on the surface of the river is very subtly observed. In the sixth state, and in that only, eight verses are etched, beginning Ci-git du vieux Pont Neuf L'exacte ressemblance Tout radoube de neuf Par recente ordonnance. This is poor stuff, and Meryon was well advised to suppress it in later states. Le Pont-au-Change (plates 17, 18), etched in 1854, shows again Le Chatelet and the Tour de I'Horloge, and, beyond the bridge, the tower, with which we are now familiar, of La Pompe Notre-Dame. This etching is remarkable for the 15 THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS many changes introduced into the sky in successive states. From the second to the sixth state of Delteil there is a balloon floating in the sky towards the left, inscribed speranza (plate 17), to which the verses L'Esperance (plate 19) allude. In the seventh state this balloon disappears ; in its stead there are great flights of birds across the sky, of which the lower re- semble wild duck, while the upper ones, with longer wings, have got hooked beaks which make them look more like birds of prey than the jackdaws which one would expect to fly round the towers of a city. These remain (plate 18) during several alterations in the plate, until the tenth state, when they have disappeared from the left, though a concentrated flock wheels about the Tour de I'Horloge, and their place is taken by new balloons, near and distant, and in the eleventh state by still more balloons, one of which bears the name of Vasco de Gama. This is all rather crazy, and the alterations were made, like those on other plates to which we shall refer later, after Meryon's mind had finally become deranged. This is evi- dently the etching referred to in a letter from Baudelaire to Poulet Malassis (quoted by M. Loys Delteil) : " Dans une de ses grandes planches, il a substitute a un petit ballon une nuee d'oiseaux de proie, et, comme je lui faisais remarquer qu'il etait invraisemblable de mettre tant d'aigles dans un ciel parisien, il m'a repondu que celan 'etait pas denuedefon- dement, puisque ces gens-la (le gouvernement de I'Empereur) avaient souvent lache des aigles pour etudier les presages, suivant le rite, — et que cela avait ete imprime dans les jour- naux, meme dans le Moniteur. Je dois dire qu'il ne se cache en aucune fa^on de son respect pour toutes les superstitions, mais il les explique mal, et il voit de la cabale partout." This letter dates from January i860, a few months after Meryon had been released from his first confinement in an asylum, and it must be observed that any eccentricities due to mental derangement can only be traced in plates etched sub- sequently to 1859, or in the /aie stages, produced by re-touch- ing after that date, of the " Eaux-fortes sur Paris " them- 16 THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS selves, which, as first completed in 1854, the year of this publication, had been perfectly normal. Another of the etched poems, " L'Esperance,*' accompanies LePont-au-Change. After this, two more of the " Eaux- Fortes " remain to be noticed, and they are by general agree- ment the finest of the whole set : La Morgue and L'A bside de Notre-Dame de Paris, both etched in 1854. La Morgue (plate 20) combines a masterly distribution of black and white spaces and a perfectly successful treatment of the windows, roofs and chimneys, which rise in a curious succession of dif- ferent levels from the riverside, with a motive of poignant human interest in the dramatic group that bears, on the left, the body of a drowned man from the Seine towards the " Doric little Morgue," as Browning calls it, on the right. The associations of the building, irresistibly suggested by this incident, are explained in the pathetic little poem, '' L'Hotel- lerie de la Mori " (plate 21), Meryon's finest efiEort in verse, etched on two separate plates and intended to accompany La Morgue, but so rare that it very seldom does so. "The bed and the table that the City of Paris offers gratis at any time to its poor children," we can imagine what they are — a marble slab, with water dripping down it, under that roof so magni- ficently etched. * ' Puissiez-vous ne point voir La sur le marbre noir De quelqu' ame cherie La navrante effigie ! ' ' The poem was evidently completed originally in the first column, ending with Meryon's name, address and date, to which he added as an afterthought a second column of verses full of consoling thoughts and ending with words of faith and hope about the expansion of a flower " a la fraiche corolle, a la sainte aureole, " a flower of love and happiness, from the germ that is in man's heart. In the impression at the British Museum, words of bad omen, like "Mort," "Misere," " Plaisir," are printed in red, and the good words, " Dieu," 17 THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS ** Cieux," " Amour," and ** Bonheur," are printed in blue. Then follows LMb5i 6|f x 2a in. PLATE 4. ANCIENNE PORTE DU PALAIS DE JUSTICE. (D.19). THIRD STATE. ^-^ x 3I / ^__ .»~- -^"e^ iu—^ ^-7n^^ t^^ PLATE 5. ARMES SYMBOLIQUES DE LA VILLE DE PARIS. (D.21.) THIRD STATE. 5| x 4| in. PLATE 6. LE STRYGE. (D.23.) EIGHTH STATE. 6| x 5| in. IF STRYGE. PLATE 7. LE PETIT PONT. (D.24.) FIFTH STATE. lOJ x 7J in. /1<*6L* ib*3Lfl.L\l \AIS GARCONS. (D.27.) THIRD STATE. oxSJ ■ mrni— III PLATE 11. LA TOL'R DE L-HORLOGE. (D.28.) THIRD STATE. lOf^ x 7i in. PLATE 12. TOURELLE DE LA RLE DE LA TLXERANDERIE. (D.29.1 SECOND STATE. 9^ x 5,^ in. PLATE 13. SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-MONT. (D.30.) FIFTH STATE. 9i x H in. 13 r > H PI r > ■0 O s *T3 m 2: o m b > s a CO Z H 33 H > H PI i M Ctn tfl Out ft fa-Kt -rrv, C'ci arrit tnt«tf« . ,t^c low «>WL(f rrvn*nM4 ■ fct cLo\tu**ff ,■ 4«f& A^r^ «Ur^ t*4 ■*IM-t^t^ cA> w^vnu r^MTU a. XrrK. it (tMi. t< U dMn,^ if^ktr*. (£>t9tin -ri.«*v«il** f « -m4rf M I iTva*T1. lufH* lUV*«i {««. U MVKOtt^ 'Jf^4vr tfuc ft ^A« ^ (yuom i** •m«rt»' PLATE 10. L'ESPERANCE. (D.35.) (\ ERS DESTINES A ACCOMPAGNER LE PONT-AL -CHANGEj 2J PLATE 20. LA M0RGI;E. (D.36.) THIRD STATE. 9J x SJ in. 5)^. 5*5 z o >• s Id OS < X V a H <: a. PLATE 25. TOl RELLE DE LA RUE DE L'ECOLE-DE-MEDECINE. (D.4L) SIXTH STATE. 8| x 5-,^ in. MDCCC LX: PLATE 2b. TDLRELLF. DF. LA RIE DE LECOLE-UE-MEDECINE. (0.4L) NINTH STATE. SJ x h\ PLATE 27. RLE DES CHANTRES. (D.42.) FIRST STATE. 11} X 51 PLATE 28. RL E DES CHANTRES. (D.42.) FOURTH STATE, llf x 51 in. X < H tn X H 3 z _: O •J Id H •< PLATE ;J0. BAIN-PROID CHEVRIER. (D.44I. FOL RTH STATE. 5J x 5| ia PLATE 31. LE MINISTERE DE I.A MARINE. (D.45.) FIRST ST.\TE. 65 x 5i in. PLATE 32. LE MINISTERE UE LA >L\R1NE. {D.i5.) FIFTH STATE. 6| x 5| in. ifSJ X < r lb Id Z H Z o c Id ?? Id < X «3 u -1 -J o u •y, as !/3 OS > o z u D < Z o Id < X o in X H OS o 5 Q O H in 5 •— » Id O < < (d O < P O o: td I tn < tn (d a (d td H < PLATE 36 RUE PIROUETTE AUX HALLES. (D.-tO.) THIRD STATE. 6J x i-^ in. X «D bi H < H (/I H Z Id > Id o > 3 Q Z en 0£ td > -(d H O < [d O jd H < a. Id H < c f-i X Id H < X H 2 < S u Id N Id Q Id ei D H id PU Id (A Id ai < Id OS > D O .J Id U < Id < a, PLATE 39. PORTE D'UN ANCIEN COUVENT A BOURGES. (D.5-t.) SECOND STATE. 6* x 4| in. PLATE 40. RUE DES TOILES A BOURGES. (D.55.) FIFTH STATE. SJ x 4' in. PLATE 41. ANCIENNE HABITATION A BOURGES. (D.56.) FOURTH STATE. 9* x oJg in. PLATE 42. ENTREE DU COUVENT DES CAPUCINS A ATHENES. (D.61.) THIRD STATE. 7| x 5 i 1 a ^ a z >a -H C bi C H z < i/i fcj lA "^ < H u ei D O b. < ^^^ OS tsZ o CO d ti z 6 c c c a 'u; o ^ & < c -< b: u >-^ Q u ^ > J ■— ' < o c z bJ C rf T^ z b! H E. U X o "< X < id ■r c s < O O til < 1945 PLATE 45. LA CHAUMIERE DU COLON. (D.T2.) THIRD STATE. 3J x 3 in. PLATE 46. PRO-VOLANT DES ILES MLLGRA\E. (D.74.) FIFTH STATE. 5| x 3J in. I PLATE 47. L. J.-MARIE BIZELL. (D.83.) FOLRTH STATE 6^ X H \r D 000 192 738 5 ■ '^ l-\ .^- i / n