Ex Libris 
 C. R. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 The 
 
 Collector Series 
 
 .!. .1. 
 
 MR. GEORGE REDWAY begs to 
 announce the publication of this series 
 of books, each volume of which will 
 discuss some one of the subjects which are of 
 interest to Collectors. 
 
 Coins and Medals, Engravings, Pictures and 
 Drawings, Postage Stamps, Book Plates, Auto- 
 graphs, Armour and Weapons, Plate, Porcelain 
 and Pottery, Old Violins, Japanese Curios, and 
 Bric-a-brac of all sorts, will be dealt with, each 
 in a separate volume, and by a writer specially 
 conversant with his subject. The instinct for 
 collecting has been made the butt for much 
 cheap ridicule by those who confound it with 
 the mere aimless bringing together of objects 
 which have no other merit than their rarity. 
 But it has repeatedly been proved that skill and
 
 patience are more helpful to success in col- 
 lecting than length of purse, and it is especially 
 for those who desire to pursue their amusement 
 with intelligent economy that this series has been 
 planned. 
 
 The great prizes in the older forms of col- 
 lecting have long since been won, and though 
 it may be needful in these handbooks to refer 
 occasionally to a book, a coin, a postage stamp, or 
 a particular " state " of an etching or engraving, 
 of which only a single example exists, the object 
 of the series will mainly be to describe those 
 specimens which are still attainable by the 
 amateurs who will take the pains to hunt them 
 down. 
 
 For this reason, though the series will be 
 written by experts, it will be written by experts 
 who have in view, not the visitors to the great 
 Museums of Europe, but the amateur and col- 
 lector of moderate means, who is anxious to 
 specialise in some one or two departments of 
 his favourite studies, and to whom it is still 
 open by care and judgment to bring together, 
 at a moderate expense, small yet perfect collec- 
 tions which any museum would be glad to 
 possess.
 
 Arrangements have been made with many 
 well-known writers and specialists for their 
 assistance as authors or editors of volumes of 
 the series. 
 
 Each volume will contain from 250 to 300 
 octavo pages, from twelve to twenty plates, and 
 a title-page designed by Mr. Laurence Housman. 
 The series will be printed, from new type, on 
 specially-prepared paper, by Messrs. Ballantyne, 
 Hanson & Co. 
 
 The price of each volume of the series will 
 be /J. (id. net. 
 
 The Publisher reserves the right to issue a 
 limited number of copies of any volume of the 
 series either on Japanese vellum, or Whatman or 
 India paper, or with the illustrations in "proof" 
 state, according as the subject of the book may 
 suggest. The number of these will be announced 
 in each case, and they will be strictly reserved 
 for Subscribers before publication. 
 
 The Series will be published in America by 
 Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., Fifth Avenue, 
 New York. 
 
 3
 
 Uniform with this Volume 
 
 The Coin Collector 
 
 By W. Carew Hazlitt 
 
 With 1 2 Collotype Plates depicting 
 129 rare Pieces 
 
 CONTENTS : 
 Introductory — Collectors and Collections — Value of 
 Coins — Unique or Remarkable Coins — Greek Coins — 
 Rome — Continent of Europe — United Kingdom — The 
 Coin Market — Terminology — Bibliography — Description 
 of Plates — Index. 
 
 " Mr. Hazlitt is an expert in regard to coins ; his book from 
 the practical standpoint is trustworthy." — Notes and Queries. 
 
 "We may say at once that we have a very interesting and 
 instructive volume before us. The subject is, of course, only 
 lightly touched upon, and no attempt at dealing with any 
 section of it in detail is made. This is as it should be in a book 
 on coins in general." — Antiquary. 
 
 "Perhaps as excellent an introduction to the study of a 
 delightful pursuit as could have been written." — Daily Tele- 
 graph. 
 
 "Abreast of the latest discoveries and theories, and is sure 
 of a welcome from the general reader as well as from the col- 
 lector." — Scotsman. 
 
 " This admirable volume gives a bird's-eye view of the whole. 
 It is clear that Mr. Hazlitt is not only an enthusiast in the 
 subject of his book, but also a student whose knowledge is at 
 once singularly wide and remarkably accurate." — Publishers' 
 Circular. 
 
 4
 
 c
 
 Collector Series 
 
 FINE PRINTS
 
 Altographs and 
 Manuscripts 
 
 Stamps 
 
 Coins 
 
 I 
 
 
 Violins 
 
 Porcelain 
 
 English Water- 
 
 COLOURS 
 
 Tapestry Lace and 
 
 Embroidery 
 
 Miniatures 
 
 FINE 
 PRINTS 
 
 BV 
 
 FREDERICK 
 WEDMORE 
 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE REDWAY 
 
 «Bfl7 
 
 English 
 Book Plates 
 
 Pictures 
 
 
 Old Bibles 
 
 An'cient Glass 
 
 r!! L ' . !! WU n u i'i| >ii —*i" « "i ^ i! i Wi|l|< 
 
 
 
 
 isf < 1^ 
 
 
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 P^WIW ' H i'l'i' . lj 
 
 
 »"T— T-TT-TTTrrTTT 
 
 "WllN',ll.MUi|lT
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 NO. PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 I. THE TASK OF THE COLLECTOR ... 23 
 
 IL CLAUDE, VANDYKE, OSTADE, HOLLAR , . 37 
 
 in. REMBRANDT 48 
 
 IV. FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING ... 66 
 
 V. WHISTLER AND HADEN 100 
 
 VI. LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 122 
 
 Vn. DiJRER: THE "LITTLE MASTERS" . . .139 
 
 VIII. ITALIAN LINE ENGRAVERS . . . .158 
 
 IX. FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PRINTS . 169 
 
 X. TURNER PRINTS 188 
 
 XI. MEZZOTINTS 209 
 
 Xn. LITHOGRAPHS 221 
 
 APPENDIX : CERTAIN WOODCUTS . . .241 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 245 
 
 INDEX 250 
 
 1127505
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Landscape vnth a Tower .... To face page bi: 
 From Rembrandt's Etching. 
 
 CUment de Jonghe „ », 62 
 
 From Rembrandt's Etching. 
 
 Le Stryge. From Meryon's Etching . . . „ ,,80 
 
 The Little Morse. From the Engraving by Durer „ „ 140 
 
 Coat of Arms itnth the Cock „ „ 146 
 
 From the Engraving by DCrer. 
 
 Panel of Ornaments „ „ 156 
 
 From the Engraving by LucAS VAN Leyden. 
 
 Dance of Damsels , „ 164 
 
 From ZoAN Andrea's Print after Man- 
 tegna's design. 
 
 Saint Cecilia „ ,,167 
 
 From Marc Antonio's Engraving after 
 Raphael. 
 
 Le Jem de VOye ....-..„ „ 178 
 
 From SURUOUE's Engraving after Chardin. 
 
 Severn and Wye „ „ 198 
 
 From the Print by TURNER. 
 
 Esther Jacobs ,, ,, 212 
 
 From SriLSBURY's Mezzotint after REYNOLDS, 
 
 Interior of Country Ale-house. . . . „ „ 216 
 
 From William Ward's Mezzotint after 
 
 MOULAND. 
 
 vU
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 In the collecting of prints — of prints which must be 
 fine and may most probably be rare — there is an ample 
 recompense for the labour of the diligent, and room for 
 the exercise of the most various tastes. Certain of the 
 objects on which the modern collector sets his hands 
 have, it may be, hardly any other virtue than the doubt- 
 ful one of scarcity ; but fine prints, whatever School they 
 may belong to, and whatever may be the money value 
 that happens to be affixed to them by the fashion of 
 the time, have always the fascination of beauty and 
 the interest of historical association. Then, considered 
 as collections of works of art, there is the jn-actical 
 convenience of their compactness. The print-collector 
 carries a nmseum in a portfolio, or packs away a picture 
 gallery, neatly, within the compass of one solander-box. 
 Again, the print-collector, if he will but occupy him- 
 self with intelligent industry, may, even to-day, have a 
 collection of fine things without j)aying overniuch, or 
 even very much, for them. All will depend upon the 
 
 School or master that he ])articularly affects. Has he 
 
 9
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 at his disposal only a few bank-notes, or only a few 
 sovereigns even, every year ? — he may yet surround 
 himself with excellent possessions, of which he will not 
 speedily exhaust the charm. Has he the fortune of an 
 Astor or a Vanderbilt ? — he may instruct the gi'eatest 
 dealers in the trade to struggle in the auction-room, on 
 his behalf, with the representatives of the Berlin Museum. 
 And it may be his triumph, then, to have paid the 
 princely ransom of the very rarest " state "" of the rarest 
 Rembrandt. And, all the time, whether he be rich 
 man or poor — but especially, I think, if he be poor — he 
 will have been educating himself to the finer percep- 
 tion of a masculine yet lovely art, and, over and above 
 indulging the " fad " of the collector, he will find that 
 his possessions rouse within him an especial interest 
 in some period of Art History, teach him a real and 
 delicate discrimination of an artist's qualities, and so, 
 indeed, enlarge his vista that his enjoyment of life itself, 
 and his appreciation of it, is quickened and sustained. 
 For gi-eat Ai't of any kind, whether it be the painter's, 
 the engraver's, the sculptor's, or the writer's, is not — it 
 cannot be too often insisted — a mere craft or sleight-of- 
 hand, to be practised from the wrist downwards. It is 
 the expression of the man himself. It is, therefore, with 
 great and new personalities that the study of an art, 
 the contemplation of it — not the mere bungling amateur 
 performance of it — brings you into contact. And there 
 is no way of studying an art that is so complete and 
 satisfactory as the collecting of examples of it. 
 
 And then again, to go back to the material part of 
 
 10
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the business, how economical it is to be a collector, if 
 only you are wise and prudent ! Of pleasant vices this 
 is surely the least costly. Nay, more; the bank-note 
 cast upon the waters may come back after many days. 
 
 The study of engravings, ancient and modern — of 
 woodcuts, line engravings, etchings, mezzotints — has 
 become by this time extremely elaborate and immensely 
 complicated. Most people know nothing of it, and do 
 not even realise that behind all their ignorance there is 
 a world of learning and of pleasure, some part of which 
 at least might be theirs if they would but enter on the 
 land and seek to possess it. Few men, even of those 
 who address themselves to the task, acquire swiftly any 
 substantial knowledge of more than one or two depart- 
 ments of the study ; though the ideal collector, and I 
 would even say the reasonable one, whatever he may 
 actually own, is able, sooner or later, to take a survey 
 of the larger gi'ound — his eye may range intelligently 
 over fields he has no thought of annexing. 
 
 From this it will be concluded — and concluded 
 
 rightly — that the print-collector must be a specialist, 
 
 more or less. More or less, at least at the beginning, 
 
 must he address himself with particular care to one 
 
 bnuich of the study. And which is it to be? The 
 
 number of fine Schools of Ktching and Engraving is 
 
 really so considerable that the choice may well be his 
 
 own. 'I'liis or that luitster, this or that j)eriod, this or 
 
 that njethod, he may select with freedom, and will 
 
 scarcely go wrong, lint the mention of it brings one, 
 
 naturally, to the divisions of the subject, and the 
 
 11
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 collector, we shall find, is face to face, first of all, with 
 this question : " Are the prints I am to bring together 
 to be the work of an artist who originates, or of an 
 artist who mainly ti-anslates ? " 
 
 Well, of course, in a discussion of the matter, the 
 great original Schools must have the first place, what- 
 ever it may be eventually decided shall be the subject 
 of your collection. You may buy, by all means, the 
 noble mezzotints which the eng-ravers of the Eighteenth 
 Century wrought after Reynolds, Romney, and George 
 Morland ; but suffer us to say a little first about the 
 great creative artists, and then, when the possible 
 collector has read about them — and has made himself 
 familiar, at the British Museum Print-room say, with 
 some portion of their work — it may be that though he 
 finds that they are nearly all, however different in 
 themselves, less decorative on a wall than the great 
 masters of rich mezzotint, he will find a charm and 
 spell he cannot wish to banish in the evidence of their 
 originality, in the fact that they are the creations of an 
 individual impulse, whether they are slight or whether 
 they are elaborate. 
 
 The Schools of early line-engravers, Italian, Flemish, 
 German, are almost entirely Schools of original pro- 
 duction, I say "almost,'"' for as early as the days of 
 Raphael, the interpreter, the translator, the copyist, if 
 you will, came into the matter, and the designs of the 
 Urbinate were multiplied by the burin of Marc Antonio 
 and his followers. And charming prints they are, these 
 
 Marc Antonios, so little bought to-day. Economical of 
 
 12
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 line they are, and ex([uisite of contour, and likely, one 
 would suppose, to be valued in the Future more than 
 they are valued just now, when the rhyme of Mr. 
 Browning, about the collector of his early period, is 
 true no longer — 
 
 " The debt of wonder my crony owes 
 Is paid to my Marc Autouios." 
 
 That in the main the earlier work is original, is not 
 a thing to be sm-prised at, any more than it is a thing 
 to lament. The naiTow world of buyers in that primi- 
 tive day was not likely to afford scope for the business 
 of the translator ; the time had not yet come when there 
 was any need for the creations of an artist to be largely 
 multiplied. That time came first, perhaps, in the 
 Seventeenth Century, when the immediately accepted 
 genius of Rubens gave ground for the employment of 
 the interpreting talent of Bolswert, Pontius, and Vos- 
 terman. Again, there was Edelinck, Nanteuil, and 
 the Drevets. 
 
 It need scarcely be said that extreme rarity is a 
 characteristic of the early Schools. The prints of two 
 of the most masculine of the Italians, for instance, 
 Andrea Mantegna and Jacopo de"" liarbarj, are not to 
 be got by ordering them. They have, of course, to be 
 watched for, and waited for, and the opj)ortunity taken 
 at the moment at which it arises. In some measure 
 there will be ex[)erienced the same engaging and ])re- 
 ventive difficulty in possessing yourself of the prints of 
 the gi'eat Germans and of the one gi'eat Flemish master.
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 Lucas of Leyden. And if these, in certain states at 
 least, in certain conditions, are not quite as hard to 
 come upon as the works of those masters who have been 
 mentioned just before them, and of their compatriots of 
 the same period, that is but an extra inducement for 
 the search, since there is, of course, a degi-ee of difficulty 
 that is actually discouraging — a sensible man does not 
 long aim at the practically impossible. Now in regard 
 to the early Flemish master with whom Diirer himself 
 not unwillingly — nay, very graciously — exchanged pro- 
 ductions, there are yet no insuperable obstacles to 
 the collector gathering together a representative array 
 of his work ; it is possible upon occasion even to add 
 one or two of his scarce and beautiful and spirited 
 ornaments to the group, such as it may be, of subjects 
 based on scriptural or on classic themes. To be a 
 specialist in Lucas van Leyden would be to be unusual, 
 but not perhaps to be unwise; yet a greater sagacity 
 would, no doubt, be manifested by concentration upon 
 that which is upon the whole the finer work of Albert 
 Diirer. Of late years, Martin Schongauer too, with the 
 delicacy of his burin, his tenderness of sentiment, and his 
 scarcely less pronounced quaintness, has been a favourite, 
 greatly sought for ; but, amongst the Germans, the work 
 that best upon the whole repays the trouble undertaken 
 in amassing it, is that of the great Albert himself, and 
 that of the best of the Little Masters. 
 
 And who then were the Little Masters ? a beginner 
 wants to know. They were seven artists, some of them 
 
 Diirer's direct pupils, all of them his direct successors ; 
 
 14
 
 INTRODUCTIOxN 
 
 getting the name that is common to them not from any 
 insignificance in their themes, but from the scale on 
 which it pleased them to execute their always deliberate, 
 always highly -wTought work. There is not one who has 
 not about his labour some measure of individual interest, 
 but the three greatest of the seven are the two brothers 
 Beham — Barthel and Sebakl — and that Prince of little 
 omamentists, Heinrich AldegTever. Nowhere was the 
 German Renaissance greater than in its ornament, and 
 the Behams, along with subjects of Allegory, History, 
 and Genre, addressed themselves not seldom to sub- 
 jects of pure and self-contained design. Rich and fine 
 in their fancy, their characteristic yet not too obvious 
 symmetry has an attraction that lasts. Barthel was 
 the less prolific of the twain, but perhaps the more 
 vigorous in invention. Sebald, certainly not at a loss 
 himself for motives for design, yet chose to fall back on 
 occasion — as in the exquisite little print of the Adam 
 and Eve — upon the inventions of his brother. There 
 is not now, there never has been, veiy much collecting 
 here in England of the German Little Masters. Three 
 j)ounds or four suffices, now and again, to buy at 
 Sotheby's, or at a dealer's, a good Beham, a good 
 Aldegrever. In their own land they are rated a little 
 more highly — are at least more eagerly sought for — 
 but with research and pains (and remembering resolutely 
 in this, as in every other case, to reject a bad impres- 
 sion), it is possii)le, for a most mcxierate simi, to have 
 (juitc a substantial bevy of tliese treasures; and though 
 large indeed in their (l(si<rti, their real ail (|ualitv, they 
 
 1 
 
 ft
 
 FINE rillNTS 
 
 are, in a material sense, as small almost as gems. Mr. 
 Loftie, who made , specialty of Sebald Behams, was 
 able, I believe, to carry a collection of them safely 
 housed in his waistcoat-pocket. 
 
 If we pass on from the Sixteenth to the Seventeenth 
 Century, we have the opportunity, if we so choose, of 
 leaving Line Engi-aving, and of studying and acquiring 
 here and there examples of the noblest Etching that 
 has been done in the world. For the Seventeenth 
 Century is the period of Rembrandt — the period, too, of 
 that meaner but yet most skilful craftsman, Adrian van 
 Ostade, and the period of the serene artist of classic 
 Landscape and Architecture, who wrought some twenty 
 plates in acjuafortis — I mean Claude. In an introduc- 
 tory chapter to a volume like the present, there is time 
 and space to consider only Rembrandt. And it cannot 
 be asserted too decisively that in the study and collec- 
 tion of Rembrandt, lies, as a rule — and must, one thinks, 
 for ever lie — the print-collector's highest and most legi- 
 timate pleasure. And even a poor man may have a few 
 good Rembrandts, though only quite a rich man can 
 have them in gi-eat numbers and of the rarest. Rem- 
 brandt is a superb tonic for people who have courted too 
 much the infection of a weakly and a morbid art. Not 
 occupied indeed in his representations of humanity with 
 visions of formal beauty, his variety is unsurpassed, his 
 vigour unequalled ; he has the gi-eat traditions of Style, 
 yet is as modern and as unconventional as Mr. Whistler. 
 Of the different classes of Rembrandt's compositions, 
 
 the sacred subjects perhaps — at least some minor 
 
 16
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 examples of them — are the least uncommon; and in 
 their intimate and homely stud^ of humanity, and 
 often too in their technique^ the sacred subjects prove 
 themselves desirable. Never, however, should they be 
 collected to the exclusion of the rarer Portraiture or of 
 tjje rarest Landscape. A Lutma, a De Jong-he, in a fine 
 state and fine condition, a Cottage xvith a Dutch Hay- 
 barn^ a Landscape xcHh a Tozcer, attain the sunnnit of 
 the etcher's art, and, both in noble conception and 
 magical execution, are absolutely perfect. Why, such 
 impressions of the Rembrandt landscapes as were dis- 
 persed but two or three years since, when the cabinet 
 of Mr, Holford passed under the hammer, appeal to the 
 trained eye with a potency not a whit less great than 
 can any masterpiece of Painting ; and, to speak in very 
 soberest English, no sum of money that it could ever 
 enter into the heart of the enthusiast to pay for them 
 would be, in truth, a too extravagant, a too unreason- 
 able ransom. 
 
 In the Eighteenth Century original Etching falls into 
 the background, and the skill of the engraver, in those 
 lands where, in the Eighteenth Century, it was chiefly 
 exercised — in France, that is, and England — is devoted 
 in the main to no sponbmcous creation, but to the 
 translation of the work of painters. In I wo mediums, 
 thorougldy opposed or thoroughly contrasted, yet each 
 with its own value, the engraver's labour is executed ; 
 there flourished, side by side, the delicate School of Line 
 Engi'aving and the noble School of Me/zotint. Repro- 
 ductive or interpretive Lini; I'^igi-aving had done great 
 
 17 B
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 thinffs a generation or so earlier, and even Mezzotint 
 was not the invention of the Eighteenth Century, though 
 it was then that the art discovered by Von Siegen, and 
 practised with a singular directness by Prince Rupert, was 
 brought to its perfection. But the Eighteenth Century 
 — even the latter half of it — was certainly the period 
 at which both arts were busiest ; and not so much the 
 professed collector as the intelligent bourgeois of the 
 time gathered these things together — in England chiefly 
 ^Mezzotints, in France chiefly Line Engi-avings — and a 
 very few shillings paid for the M'Ardell or the Watson 
 after Reynolds, and later for the Raphael Smith or 
 the William Ward after George Morland. Often the 
 engraver was a publisher of his own and other people"'s 
 prints. That was the case in Paris as much as in 
 London ; and in Paris, in the third quarter of the 
 Eighteenth Century, the line engi-avers issued for a 
 couple of francs or so — and the Merciire de France was 
 apt, like newspapers in our own day, to notice the 
 jniblication — those admirable, and still in England, too 
 little known prints which recoi'd the dignified observa- 
 tion, the sober, just suggested comedy of Chardin. 
 
 There were exceptions, of course, to the common rule 
 that in the period of our first Georges, and of Louis the 
 Fifteenth, engi-aver's work was translation. Hogarth, 
 in the first half of the century — about the time when 
 the French line engravers were occupied with their 
 quite exquisite translations of the gi'ace of Watteau, 
 Lancret, and Pater — wrought out on copper with 
 
 rough vigour his original conceptions of the Rake's 
 
 18
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 and of the Harlot's Progress, and not a few of his 
 minor themes ; but when it came to the rendering into 
 black and white of those masterly canvases of Marriage 
 a la Mode, professional engravers, such as Ravenet and 
 Scotin, were employed to admirable purpose, and a 
 Jittle later the very colours of the canvas seemed to 
 live, the painter's very touch seemed to be reproduced, 
 in the noble mezzotints of Earlom. And the immense 
 successes of this reproductive engraving, with the art of 
 Hogarth, brings us back to the truth of our earlier pro- 
 position ; the period was a period of intei-pretation, not 
 of original work, with the engraver. The whole French 
 Eighteenth Century School, from Watteau down to 
 Lavreince, is to be studied, and collected, too, in Line 
 Engraving. The School is not invariably discreet in 
 subject : Lavreince has his suggestiveness, though rarely 
 does he go beyond legitimate comedy, and Baudouin, 
 Fran^-ois Boucher's son-in-law, has his audacities ; but 
 against these is to be set the dignified idyl of the gi-eat 
 master of Valenciennes ; the work of Watteau 's pupils, 
 too ; the works of Boucher ; Massard's consunnnate 
 rendering, in finest or most finished line, of this or 
 that seductive vision of Greuze ; the stately comedy 
 of Moreau le Jeune ; and, as I have said alrejuly, the 
 excellent interpretations of the homely, natural, so 
 desirable art of Chardin. 
 
 Mezzotint really did for all the English j)ainters of 
 impoi-tance of the Eighteenth Century, and in a measure 
 for certain earlier Dutchmen, all that Line Engi-aving 
 
 accomplished for the French. " By these men I shall 
 
 19
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 be inunortiilised," Sir Joshua said, when the work of 
 M'Ardell and his fellows came under his view. Gains- 
 borough, it is true, was not interpreted quite so much 
 or quite so successfully. But Romney has as much 
 justice done to him in later English Mezzotint as the 
 luxurious art of Lely and Kneller obtained from one 
 of the earlier practitioners of the craft — John Smith. 
 Morland*'s continued and justified popularity in our 
 own time is due to nothing half as much as to the 
 mezzotints by Raphael Smith, and Ward, and Young, 
 and others of that troop of brethren. And it was 
 mezzotint, in combination with the bitten line for lead- 
 ing features of the composition, that Turner, early in 
 our own century — in 1807 — decided to employ in the 
 production of those seventy plates of Liber Studiortim 
 upon which, already even, so much of his fame rests. 
 
 Lihei' Studiorum occupies an interesting and a pecu- 
 liar position between work upon the copper wholly 
 original and work wholly reproductive. Turner etched 
 the leading lines himself. In several cases he com- 
 pleted, with his own hand, in mezzotint, the whole 
 of the engraved picture ; but generally he gave the 
 " scraping " to a professional engraver, whose efforts he 
 minutely supervised and most elaborately corrected. 
 In recent years, almost as much, though not quite as 
 much sought for as the Liber plates of Turner, are 
 certain rather smaller mezzotints which record the art 
 of Constable ; but Constable himself did nothing on 
 these plates, though he supervised their production by 
 
 David Lucas. Turner's connection with professional 
 
 20
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 engravei"s was not confined to the priceless and admir- 
 able prints of the Liber. He trained a school of line 
 engi'avers, welcoming at first the assistance of John 
 Pye and of George and William Cooke. These two 
 brothei-s were the engi'avers mainly of his Southern 
 XJoast, and nothing has been more manly than that ; 
 but the work of William ]VIiller, in the Chvelly of that 
 Southern Coast, and in a subsequent series, interpreted 
 with quite peculiar exquisiteness those refinements of 
 light which in Turner"'s middle and later time so much 
 engaored his effort. 
 
 W^ith Turner's death, or with the death of the 
 artists who translated him, fine Line Engraving almost 
 vanished. It had all but disappeared when, nearly 
 fifty yeare ago, there began in France and England 
 that Revival of Etching with which the amateur of 
 to-day is so rightly concerned. A few etchings by 
 Bracquemond — of still - life chiefly — a larger number 
 by Jules Jaccjuemart, of fine objects in ])orcelain, 
 jewellery, bronze, and noble stones, are amongst the 
 more precious products of the earlier part of the Revival 
 of Etching, and they are so treated that they are inven- 
 tions indeed, and of an originality that is exquisite. 
 But the greatest event of the earlier years of the Revival 
 was the appearance, as long ago as 1850, of the genius 
 of Meryon, who, during but a few years, wrought a 
 series of vhef'n-crccuvre — inspired visions of Paris — unci 
 died, neglected and ignored, in the gi'eat city to wliich 
 it is he who has raised, iti those few j)rints of his, the 
 
 noblest of all monuments. 
 
 21
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 Two other men of veiy different genius and of 
 unsurpassed energy we associate with this revival of 
 Etching. Both are yet with us in the fulness of their 
 years ; and both will occupy the collector who is wise 
 in his generation, and will be, one may make bold to 
 say, the delight of the far Future as well as of the Pre- 
 sent. I mean Sir Seymour Haden and Mr. James 
 Whistler. The prints of Seymour Haden shame no 
 cabinet; the best of Whistler's scarcely suffer at all 
 when placed beside the master-work of Rembrandt. 
 But it is dangerous treating much of contemporaries 
 when one''s task is chiefly with the dead ; and though 
 I might mention many other not unworthy men, of 
 whom some subsequent historian must take count — 
 nay, who may even be refeiTed to at a later stage of 
 this volume — I will confine myself here, in this intro- 
 ductory chapter, to just the intimation that Legros and 
 Helleu are, next after the etchers I have already named, 
 those probably who should engage attention. 
 
 OC)
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 "^ The use and object of this book, and necessary limita- 
 
 tions of its service — Monographs for the specialist — The 
 point of view of the individual — I'he vastness of the 
 Print-collector s field — Fashions and silly fads — Barto- 
 lozzi best in his "Tickets" — The exaltation of the 
 coloured print — Its general triviality — The task of the 
 Collector — The file impression — Brilliance — Condition 
 — The conservation of prints. 
 
 A LirrLE Guide to Print Collecting such as the present 
 one, even if written on very personal lines, not in the 
 least concealing the writer's own prepossessions, and 
 giving therefore, quite possibly, what may seem dispro- 
 portionate notice of certain masters, cannot, of course, 
 hope to entii'ely suffice for the special student of any 
 particular man. The special student will not, if he is 
 reasona])le, find that the little book falls short of its aim, 
 and fails to do its proper woi'k, because it does not and 
 cannot possibly sup])ly within its limited volume all the 
 information of which the accomplished student is him- 
 self possessed, and which he feels to be more or less 
 indispensable even to the beginner who desires to be 
 thorough. He will know — und will scarcely need that 
 I should here remind him — that not one book, nor even 
 a hundred books, can make an expert, can turn the tyro 
 
 into a j)ractical comioisseur. What the tyro wants is 
 
 23
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 experience, all that is learnt by loss and gain, and by 
 bnishiner shoulder to shoulder with dealers and brother- 
 collectors and the auctioneer in the auction-room. He 
 wants that, to become a practical collector at all, and 
 to become a specialist he wants that and something 
 more. He wants access to and acqiiaintance with a 
 large and considerable branch of what is now unques- 
 tionably an immense literature. There are larger books 
 than this of mine on the general theme of Print Collect- 
 ing, and they have been written at different times, with 
 different prepossessions, with diff'erent prejudices, from 
 different points of view. But over and above these 
 larger books there is a library of monographs on 
 particular masters, works which are nearly always 
 Catalogues raisonnh, and often treatises to boot ; and 
 while no one of these monographs can be altogether 
 neglected by the would-be student of the artist with 
 whom it is concerned, some of them must be among 
 the most cherished of his companions, among the voice- 
 less but instructive friends whose society is education. 
 No little book then, like the present one, can take the 
 place of experience and of the study of many books ; 
 and least of all perhaps can a book which does not 
 affect to be the abstract and brief chronicle of what 
 has been done before, but Avhich j^refers rather to 
 approach its large subject from the point of view of 
 an individual collector, who yet, it must be said, while 
 cultivating specialties, has not been inaccessible to the 
 charm of much that lies beyond the limits of any fields 
 
 of his own. 
 
 24
 
 THE TASK OF THE COLLECTOR 
 
 So much by way of explanation — by way, too, of 
 disarming the kind of criticism which would judge a 
 general endeavour only by the success with which it 
 seemed to meet the needs of a particular case. A 
 Bibliography of the subject, which will be found on 
 l9,ter pages, and which must itself be a selection, com- 
 paratively brief, from the mass of material that bears 
 upon the theme, will suffice to set the student of the 
 special school or master upon the desii'able track ; and 
 meanwhile one thing may be done, nor, as I hope, that 
 one thing only : the would-be tiller of the particular 
 plot may be reminded of the vastness of the land. 
 Even of print collecting it is true, sometimes, that the 
 trees prevent you from seeing the forest. 
 
 I have said just now, in the print-collector\s world, 
 how vast is the land ! Time, of course, tends to extend 
 it — would extend it inevitably, by reason of new pro- 
 duction, did not Fashion sometimes intervene, and, 
 while oj)ening to the explorer some new tract, taboo a 
 district over which he had aforetime been accustomed 
 to wander. The fashions of the wise are not wholly 
 without reason, but the fashions of the foolish have 
 also to be reckoned with. As an instance, the very 
 generation that has seen the most just a])])raisement of 
 original Etching has witnessed too the exaltation of 
 IJHrt()lo//i and of liis nerveless School, a decline of 
 interest in Marc Antonio, even to some extent in Albert 
 Diirer, and a silly rage for the coloured print which 
 fifty years since was the appropi-iate ornajuent of scrap- 
 book and nursery. 
 
 25
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 I have spoken harshly of two classes of things which 
 within the last few years have found eager jjurchasers, 
 and it is incumbent upon me that I justify my harsh- 
 ness and warn the beginner all the more effectually 
 thereby. The Bartolozzis, then, which have been puffed 
 so absurdly — what is their real place ? To begin 
 with, they are — and in this one respect they resemble 
 Marc Antonios indeed, and the justly extolled mezzo- 
 tints which translate Sir Joshua — they are the work 
 of an engraver who interpreted the theme of another, 
 and not of an engraver who invented his own. But 
 this it is evident that they may be, and yet by no 
 means be criminal. Wherein, it may be asked fairly, 
 lies their gi*eater offence.? It lies in this. That the 
 Humanity they depict is generally without character 
 — that in no austere and in no captivating, over- 
 whelming beauty, but in its feeble grace, lies its chief 
 virtue. Bartolozzi was a good draughtsman. He was 
 no doubt correct habitually, and he was habitually 
 elegant. Academic he was, though competent. But 
 again, how terribly monotonous was the order of his 
 beauty, and how weakly sentimental the design of 
 those — Cipriani and Angelica Kaufmann principal 
 amongst them — to whose conceptions he lent at least 
 a measure of support ! Of Bartolozzi's works, the best 
 for the collector are the "Tickets." They are on a 
 small scale — dainty little engi-aved invitations or 
 announcements to the public of their day, giving the 
 opportunity to hear Giardini or Madame Banti, or some 
 
 other singer of songs or maker of excellent music, 
 
 26
 
 THE TASK OF THE COLLECTOR 
 
 Delightful little compositions they undoubtedly are, 
 with the nude drawn charmingly. Half-a-dozen of 
 them I would possess with satisfaction. But all the 
 rest ! — all those Bartolozzis which, as they increase in 
 size, get (just as photogi-aphs do) increasingly meaning- 
 lees ! The reasonable collector, if his instinct be fine 
 or his taste educated, will not desire these, even at 
 prices that may be comparatively insignificant, whilst 
 Rembrandts, Diirers, Hogarths, Watteaus, Meryons, 
 Whistlers, exist to delight the world. 
 
 The coloured jn-int — for it is time to make some 
 brief allusion to it — is often very " taking." To the 
 novice who does not think, it may even appear to be 
 entirely desirable. But, like the average Bartolozzi, it 
 is trivial at best. A pretty enough decoration for the 
 wall of a room in which artistic taste is neither accom- 
 plished nor severe, it has at least to be recognised that 
 its art is hybrid. The weight and value of the light 
 and shade of the engraving are apt to be minimised or 
 discounted by the application of colour; and the colour, 
 though put on with ingenuity, has little of the gradation 
 and the sul)tle blending, and nothing whatever of the 
 " touch," in which the art of the painter in some measure 
 consists, 'lliat is why a set of Wheatlcy's "Cries of Lon- 
 don,"" printed in bistre, is far better than a set which 
 has the superficial gaiety of many hues. A coloured 
 Morland is a Moriand nnn-dered. More tolerant may we 
 be of the coloured prints of France ; the lighter art of a 
 Taunay or of a Debucourt furording not so ill with the 
 
 aj)plication of a j)roces.s which boasts no other charm 
 
 27
 
 FINE PRLNTS 
 
 than the charm of the a peu pres. ]Jut even where the 
 coloured print is least offensive or least inadequate, no 
 one can affect to discover in it the more serious qualities 
 of Art. Often, experts inform us, the colour was only 
 applied when the original work upon the plate was 
 lialf worn out — when the plate could yield no longer an 
 impression that was satisfactory. Then it was, at least 
 in some cases, that the aid of colour — or some approxi- 
 mation to the colour that a painter might have sought 
 to realise — was called in, and so the opportunity pre- 
 pared for the foolish rich of our period to pay great 
 prices for an engaging jns-alle?'. 
 
 Uninstructed acquaintances, ill-judging dealers, and 
 the habit of an indolent world to regard old prints as 
 humble examples of decorative furniture — all these com- 
 bine to make it possible for the beginner, and even for 
 the man of many winters who is outside Art, to spend 
 his time in accumulating objects no one of which is of 
 the first order. Even certain print-sellers, who ought 
 to do much better, but who possess, we must suppose, 
 more of technical knowledge than of sure and well- 
 established taste, lend themselves to the diffusion of 
 the love of the second-rate. There are several high- 
 class dealers now in London, people of probity and of 
 accomplishment, some of them young men, too — a cir- 
 cumstance which bodes well for the future. But those 
 were safer days when the world of the collector lay 
 within narrower limits, and when the close contact that 
 there was wont to be between a few learned salesmen 
 
 and a few scarcely less learned purchasei-s, who bought, 
 
 28
 
 THE TASK OF THE COLLECTOR 
 
 of course, gradually, who never bought things en bloc — 
 who studied and enjoyed, in fine, instead of merely 
 possessed — made it an unlikely matter that any quarter 
 would be shown to the unworthy productions of a 
 vague and indifferent art. But the beginner of to-day 
 niust take things as he finds them. If the root of the 
 matter be in him, his mistakes need not be serious. 
 The opportunities for sagacious choice in collecting yet 
 remain frequent. If he collects fine things, he will not, 
 of course, succeed in acquiring so extensive a cabinet as 
 that which rejoiced the heart of his forerunner when 
 prices were much lower — when a Rembrandt, now worth 
 a hundred guineas, was sold for a ten-pound note. He 
 must recognise, too, that a very large number of the 
 finest impressions — and it is upon fine impressions only 
 that his mind should be set — have come to be cloistered 
 in National, in University, even in some cases in Muni- 
 cipal institutions. But yet the field that is open to 
 him is a wide one, and, as was said in the Introduction, 
 it is possil)le for diligence and intelligence to accom})lish 
 much, even if unaccompanied by a purse that is big 
 and deep. 
 
 It has been customary in books on Collecting to say 
 something about the (pialities that are desirable in a 
 [)riiit — the (|UHlities, I mean, that, in their combination 
 constitute, not a fine subject — that is a different matter 
 altogether — but a fine impression, an impression such 
 as the collector sJKMild wish lo |)Ossess. And though, 
 no doubt, for certain remiers, the treatise of IMaberly, 
 
 and the later and ainj)ler ti'catise of Dr. Willshire, 
 
 20
 
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 may be without difficulty accessible, the expert will 
 hold ine blameless for not forgetting here the interests 
 of the beginner, and for therefore going, though it shall 
 be rapidly, over ground that, to the connoisseur, must 
 needs be familiar. 
 
 The first and most indispensable requisite, then, for 
 a fine impression of a print, ancient or modern, is that 
 the plate betray no signs of wear, so that the scheme of 
 the artist in line and light and shade shall be presented 
 still with virgin intactness. It may be a high ideal to 
 aim at, but it is not unattainable ; and practically it is 
 as necessary in a Dlirer three hundred years old as in a 
 Whistler which may have been wi'ought only twelve years 
 ago. Very different qualities of surface are, of coui'se, 
 sought for in prints of different kinds, devoted to dif- 
 ferent effects. The perfection of one plate may be 
 attained when it is " brilliant ; "^ the perfection of an- 
 other when it is " rich." But in all, the signs of wear, 
 and, in nearly all, the signs of re-touching, are to be 
 avoided. Wear is indicated perhaps most easily by the 
 absence of clearness in lines designed to be distinct, and 
 by an acquired evenness and monotony in passages 
 which obviously were never meant to be monotonous 
 and even. Re-touching is a more subtle matter. It is 
 generally resorted to to repair the wear ; and sometimes 
 the re-touching is the w^ork of the original artist, and 
 sometimes it is the work of a later craftsman, concerned 
 in the interests of publisher or dealer, or it may be in 
 his own, if it is he who has become the possessor of the 
 
 plate. 
 
 30
 
 THE TASK OF THE COLLECTOR 
 
 But an impression originally rich or brilliant, or 
 brilliant and rich at once, may, by ill-usage, or even by 
 the absence of a delicate care, have lost the qualities 
 that commended it to its lirst possessor. The beginner 
 in pi-int collecting must assure himself not only that the 
 work is still sood, but that the surface is clean and 
 fair. Then he must look at the back of the print, 
 must assure himself, by careful examination there, that 
 it has not been " backed," or patched, or mended : at 
 all events, that all the mending it has required has 
 been slight and neatly executed. Damp is a deadly 
 enemy of prints. They pine for dry warm air as nuich 
 as a soldier sent from out of Provence into the chilli- 
 ness of French Flanders. " // paralt que <^a grclottait 
 la-bas^ said a Provencal once to me at Cannes. Many 
 a print is as sensitive to dampish cold as an American 
 consumptive. The collector then must diagnose well — 
 must satisfy himself as far as possible that the seeds of 
 disease are not in the print already — and if he buys the 
 print, he must see to its health carefully. 
 
 Let me here hiisten, though, to assure him nothing 
 
 more than reasonable care is recjuired, and I will tell 
 
 him at once in wlmt it consists. If he frames his 
 
 print, he hsul better order that the thickness of some 
 
 moderate mount — an eighth or twelfth of ;ui inch is 
 
 fully enough for the |)urj)ose — intervenes between the 
 
 surface of the j)rint and the glass. The glass may 
 
 "sweat" from fiiiic to time, and ol)vioiisIv its moisture 
 
 must not be deposited iij)om the very object it exists to 
 
 guard. If a })nnt has great money value, or if from 
 
 81
 
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 any cause the collector sets much store by it, it should 
 not remain in any frame for more than a few years 
 without at least a careful re-examination. Fresh air 
 will do it good ; and, moreover, it is good for the 
 collector's own eye (whose delicacy ought to be culti- 
 vated by all possible means) that account be taken of 
 a print's ap})earance not only when it is under glass. 
 If the collector, instead of framing his print, puts it in 
 a portfolio, he must see at least that it is so handled 
 and managed that its surface is not rubbed by the 
 backs of other prints, or the backs of their mounts. 
 Where one print follows another in a portfolio or 
 solander-box, the mounts of all should be smooth. The 
 portfolio must keep dust out as well as it can. Tlie 
 solander-box will keep dust out nmch better. And 
 whether the ])rint is in folio or box, or laid naked in 
 the drawer or shelf of a cabinet, it should be from time 
 to time looked at, given, so to put it, a " bath of air " 
 on a sunny and dry day. A country-house, unless the 
 walls are very thick and the rooms kept very carefully, 
 is not the best place for a collection of prints, which 
 (in England at least) flourish most in the atmosphere 
 of cities. It is in cities that they require the least solici- 
 tude. I know very well, when I say this, that it will be 
 news to some people that prints require any solicitude 
 at all. I have pointed out that they do, but also that 
 their possession does not involve any overwhelming 
 responsibility. 
 
 There is one other point as to the condition of a 
 
 print — as to that which it is desirable to find in it 
 
 32
 
 THE TASK OF THE COLLECTOR 
 
 before we purchase it — that should be touched upon 
 before this chapter ends. That is the question of 
 margin. It may be that some worthy people are almost 
 as sharply divided upon the question of margin as are 
 New York gourmets upon the question of how many 
 niinutes it takes to roast to perfection a canvas-back 
 duck. But the majority of collectors are advocates of 
 margins : they " take curious pleasure " in them, Mr. 
 Whistler remarks. A margin undoubtedly has much 
 to recommend it. While a print is mounted, and even 
 after it is mounted — on those occasions, I mean, when, 
 under examination, it passes from hand to hand — the 
 margin helps to protect it. Yet it is evident that a 
 margin has no artistic merit, and that therefore to 
 establish a very great difference in money value be- 
 tween the print with a margin and the print with 
 none, is to be rather absurd. Of course a print three 
 hundred years old, which has conserved its mai'gin to 
 some extent, is a yet greater rarity than a print which 
 has not ; and as rarity — rarity of condition even — is 
 paid for as well as beauty, there is some just market- 
 value in margin, no doubt. 
 
 lUit, unlike that fine condition of surface on which T 
 have so nmch insisted, the possession of margin is by no 
 means strictly necessary. It is sometimes an added grace, 
 but never, at least in the case of a print that is ancient, 
 and that lias been subjected ])robabIv to many vicissi- 
 tudes — never in such a case is it an indis})ensable virtue, 
 llarely does the ample margin go back beyond the 
 Eightecntii Century. In your etching by Meryon oi-
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 Haden — clone fifty or thirty years ago — you may expect 
 some margin, fairly. In your noble line-engraving 
 after Chardin or Watteau, you may be glad of some, 
 and may be grateful and surprised if you find much. 
 In your Rembrandt, a little enhances the value. In 
 your Diirer, an eighth of an inch, how precious and 
 how rare ! 
 
 In regard to the loss of a mai-gin, while in the case 
 of a very old print it is due probably to gradual ravages 
 and various little accidents, in the case of engravings 
 less old, and especially in the case of engravings which 
 (mezzotints, for example) have always been held most 
 decorative on a wall, it is due simply to the process 
 of framing. When the mezzotint — or whatever it is — 
 was prepared for the frame, the knife removed the 
 margin at a stroke, and with it there perished, for the 
 future collector, some chance of exultation and not 
 inhuman boasting. 
 
 S4
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The old-ivorld Etchers, and their due place in the 
 Collector's estimation — Claude — Dumesnil's list of his 
 etched work — Principal pieces — The money value of 
 Claude's etchings — Vandyke's etched portraits — 
 Ostade — Richard Fisher's Ostades — Their prices — 
 Wenceslaus Hollar — The immense volume of his work 
 — Its character — Its appreciation by Heywood and 
 Seymour Iladai — Prices of Hollars in the print- 
 market. 
 
 As I think that, speaking generally, the wisest collector 
 is the collector who devotes himself to original work, 
 we will begin the study of some various departments of 
 the collector's pursuit by a gi-oup of chapters on work 
 that is wholly original. And among work that is 
 wholly original, what is there that — since chronological 
 order cannot require to be strictly observed — deserves 
 to take precedence of the art of Etching ? Not only is 
 the art up to a certain point popular to-day — that is 
 a consideration which need not affect the wise collector 
 very much — but it is, of all the arts of IJIack and White, 
 the one which lends itself most reatlily to the expres- 
 sion of a mootl — therefore to the expression of a 
 personality. In Line-Engraving, of which the finest 
 examples cainiot, on many grounds, be esteemed too 
 
 highly, the chtJ-cTcvuvrc is slow of accomplishment. 
 
 S5
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 In Etching, the honr may produce the masterpiece, 
 though indeed many a masterpiece has involved some- 
 thing more than the labour of a day. 
 
 Of old-world etchers whose plates should occupy the 
 collector seriously — of old-world etchers between whom 
 he may take his choice, or, if he prefer it, divide his 
 attention — there are, after all, but a few. To have 
 named Claude, Vandyke, Rembrandt, Ostade, and 
 Hollar, is to have named the chief. Other Dutch 
 genre painters than Ostade of course etched cleverly, 
 but none with his perfection — his perfection, I mean, 
 when he was at his best. And behind Rembrandt 
 was a group of men, some of whom simply imi- 
 tated, others of whom followed in ways more nearly 
 their own. Other Dutchmen, again, like Backhuysen 
 and Adrian Van de Velde and Zeeman — whom, nearly 
 two centuries afterwards, Meryon worshipped — did 
 work that need not be put aside. Latterly it has 
 not been put aside ; for in a recent Portfolio Mr. 
 Binyon made it the subject of special study. But 
 still the greater men are the few who were named 
 first. 
 
 Of these great men, it was Claude, Vandyke, and 
 Ostade who wrought the fewest plates. As for Van- 
 dyke, not only was his work not vast in quantity — his 
 labour upon each particular plate stopped at an early 
 stage. To the copper's detriment, as many think, 
 others continued it, and Vandyke's etchings are only 
 entirely his own in that first State which is the stage 
 
 of the sketch. Yet are they far indeed from being 
 
 36
 
 CLAUDE, VANDYKE, OSTADE, HOLLAR 
 
 worthless afterwards, A background is added. The 
 record of character remains pretty much the same. 
 
 It was not quite thus with Claude. He, like other 
 gi'eat masters, and like some small ones, suffers by the 
 mischief of " re-touching ; "" but nothing done upon 
 h^ plates, or upon any imitations of them, carries the 
 work much further than Claude himself had carried it. 
 With all the free and easy handling of the point, there 
 is an obvious completeness — a completeness not only for 
 the initiated — in some of the very best of his work. In 
 tone, in delicacy of chiaroscuro, the plate of the Bouvier 
 — the masterpiece for atmospheric effect — is carried 
 as far as it could have been carried by line-engrav- 
 ing. It has indeed quite as much atmosphere, though 
 not quite as much delicacy of contour, as the marvellous 
 plates done on about the same scale by the translators 
 of Turner, whom Turner in a measure trained — I mean 
 especially the men who wrought upon the Southern 
 Cncuit series : George Cooke with Margate, Horsburgh 
 with Wh'itstahle, the incomparable AVilliam Miller with 
 Portsmouth and Chvelly. Claude's Carnpo Vaccino, 
 again, is ecjually finished to the comers; and so, of 
 coui*se, in its perhaps subtler fashion, is the famous 
 Sunset (Dumesnil, No. 15). Cattle Go'ni^ Home in 
 Stormy Weather has the appearance of more sununary 
 labour, a freedom more convincing, and more appro- 
 priate to that effect of atmosphere, which, together with 
 the movement of beasts and lierdsmen, the plate is de- 
 voted to recording. Again, complete tonality is not 
 sought for — at all events is not ol)tained — in Shepherd
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 and Shcphcrdc.s.s Conversing^ which yet, in the rare 
 First State of it, which alone is entirely worthy, is full 
 from end to end of Claude's happiest and freest, and — 
 dare one say ? — most playful work in the draughtsman- 
 ship of foliage. In the Second State one tall tree is 
 deprived of its height and grace. The picture is spoilt ; 
 or, if not spoilt, marred. 
 
 It is now four-and-twenty years since, at the Burling- 
 ton Fine Arts Club, there was held a well-chosen and 
 perhaps the first and last important exhibition of the 
 etchings of Claude. Dumesnil's list of all Claude's work 
 in aquafortis includes forty-two prints — some of them 
 unimportant ; and of the forty-two, the Burlington 
 Club, with access to the best collections everywhere 
 (whatever modest things may have been said on this 
 occasion to the contrary), managed to show twenty-six. 
 Besides the plates mentioned in the preceding para- 
 graph, the Dance by the Waterside^ the Dance under 
 the Trees, and the Wooden Bridge are amongst the 
 things one would covet. In the Wooden Bridge there 
 is the whole s})irit of the broad Italian land. A fine 
 Second State, from the cabinet of some good collector — 
 my own is from John Barnard's — represents the plate 
 perfectly. Of the Bouvicr you are lucky if you can get 
 a Second State. Sir Seymour Haden, who would never 
 tolerate a bad impression, long contented himself with 
 a Third, though some years before he parted with his 
 things he managed to acquire a First. That delightful 
 collector, Richard Fisher, had a First State of the 
 
 Cattle Going Home in Stormy Weather, and a noble 
 
 38
 
 CLAUDE, VANDYKE, OSTADE, HOLLAR 
 
 little print it was. Mr. Julian Marshall, who bought 
 rare things in his youth, and keenly appreciates them 
 (though, while in his youth still, he sold many), had, 
 and doubtless retains, a First State of the Rape of' 
 Europa, which, in an impression like his own — " early, 
 undescribed, before the plate was cleaned," says the 
 Burlington Club Catalogue — is indeed most desirable. 
 
 As to the money value of Claude's etchings, in the 
 "States" and the conditions in which they are alone 
 desirable, the prices that were reached at the Seymour 
 Haden sale in 1891 are as jjood an indication as one 
 can well obtain. Sir Seymour's beautiful and silvery 
 Fii-st State of Le Bouvier was knocked down at <£*42 ; 
 his Dance under the Trees — a First State too — at 
 X^IO ; his Sunrise (but it was a Fourth State) at 
 i?5, 12s. 6d. ; his SfupJierd and Slieplierdess Con- 
 versing, in the P'irst State, at £1 (and this was cheap) ; 
 his Campo Vaccino, in the First State, at £Q, 6s. He 
 had no Wooden Bridge. At Richard Fisher's sale, 
 in 1892, the Bouvier, in a Second or Third State, 
 fetched £\5, and a good impression of the Dance 
 under the Trees, £\'^. It will be seen that, rare 
 though Claude's etchings are, in good condition, they 
 do not, ill liiigland at least, when they aj)pear in the 
 auction-room, command j)rices that can be called 
 excessive. 
 
 The etchings of Vandyke, at all events the best of them, 
 have fetched more. It iiiiisl be that their rarity, in 
 the most desired condition, is even greater. Sir Sey- 
 mour Iladen had a few stiju-rb ones. Vandyke's own
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 portrait (Dutuit, No. 3) sold in the Haden sale for ^60; 
 the pui-e etching of the Snydcrs for cf 44 ; the Snttcr- 
 mwhs for <f 30 ; the Lucas Vosterrnan, £50 ; the masterly 
 Dc Wad — which, even in an early, well-chosen im- 
 pression of a later State, one finds an enviable posses- 
 sion — ^^17, 10s. The touch of Vandyke has nothing 
 that is comparable with Rembrandt''s subtlety, yet is 
 it decisive and immediate, and so far excellent. And 
 Vandyke, however inclined he may have been to undue 
 elegance — an elegance tj-op voidue — in certain painted 
 portraits, seized firmly and nobly in his etched por- 
 traits of men (and practically his etchings are only 
 ])ortraits of men) the masculine character and the 
 marked individuality of his models. 
 
 Of the etchings of Adrian van Ostade, Mr. Fisher 
 had what was practically a complete collection — he had 
 fifty plates ; and as he was a great admirer of this 
 unquestioned master of technique, this penetrating even 
 if pessimistic observer of Life, he had taken care to 
 have impressions of good character : in some cases, as 
 good as it is ever possible to get. Inequality of course 
 there was ; and whilst here and there an indifferent 
 impression fell for a few shillings, sums as important as 
 have been paid for Ostades were realised for the rarest 
 and the best chosen things. We will consider the prices 
 of the most desirable. For a First State of the Man 
 and Woman Conversing, £\Q was the ransom. ^£'14 
 was paid for even the Fourth State of that rarity, The 
 Empty Pitcher. Herr IVIeder gave ^^63 for the Second 
 
 State of a piece which some call spirited and some call 
 
 40
 
 CLAUDE, VANDYKE, OSTADE, HOLLAR 
 
 savage, The Quarrel with Dra-iVn Knives, and X^26, 10s. 
 for the First State of A Woman Sitting on a Doorstep. 
 i?80 was paid by the same buyer for the First State of 
 the Woman Singing, and Mr. Gutekunst gave £211 for 
 a Fourth State of The Painter. Could I become the 
 oxner of two masterpieces of Ostade, the pieces which 
 I should think worthy to be dignified with that name, 
 and which I should consequently proceed to possess, 
 would be The Family and the Pea-sant Paying his 
 Reckoning. The fii*st — not less excellent than any 
 other in technique — is full of homely piety and truth 
 to common things. It is one of Ostade's larger pieces ; 
 and at the Fisher sale, the First State, which had been 
 in the Hawkins collection, passed into the hands of Mr. 
 Deprez for oC23. The Peasant Paying his Reckoning 
 is one of the smaller plates. As the title goes far to 
 imply, it represents a tavern visitor making ready to 
 leave the cosy interior ; the landlady looking out with 
 keenness for the sum that is due. The piece teems 
 with delicate observation, not only of chai-acter, but of 
 pictures(jue detail, and with light and airy touch. It 
 was a woiiderful Fourth State that was in the Fisher 
 collection ; and i'42 was the price that Ilerr Meder, 
 the most entei'])risiiig buyer of Ostatles that day, hiui 
 to pay to call it his. An excellent connoisseur tells us 
 that the earliest impressions of Ostiules are generally 
 light in tone — that gofxl impressions are also often 
 [)nntc(l in a 1)r<)wnish ink, and that they are with- 
 out the thick line which invariably surrountis the 
 later ones. 
 
 41
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 Wenceslaus Hollar, born at Prague in 1607, and 
 working a long while in London, under the patronage 
 of Charles the First's Lord Arundel, and dying here 
 amongst us, in Gardiner Street, Westminster, in 1677, 
 was a far more prolific etcher than either Claude, Van- 
 dyke, or Adrian Van Ostade. In fact, that is not the 
 way to put it at all ; for whilst the plates of each of 
 these are to be counted at the most by scores, the plates 
 of Hollar mount to the number of two thousand seven 
 hundred. He was a craftsman of gi'eat variety and 
 ingenuity of method. But it has, of course, to be 
 remembered of him that in certain figure-pieces and 
 mythological subjects at least, he was inteipreter and 
 populariser of the inventions of another, and that in 
 most of his interesting little views he was a dainty but 
 unmoved chronicler of pure fact. An individual note 
 — a wholly individual note — scarcely belongs to his 
 rendering of landscape or to his vision of the town. 
 Yet he is a most sterling artist — not a mere monument 
 of industry — and his quaintness, only a part of which 
 he derives from his theme, is undoubtedly attractive. 
 The collector who collects his work has what is a faith- 
 ful record of some of the individuals and of many of 
 the types of Hollar^s time, and a fair vision of the 
 ordinary aspect of the outward world of Hollar's day. 
 The man's industry was, as we have seen, colossal, and 
 even at the best he was but ill -rewarded. Fourpence 
 per hour was, says Mr. Heywood, the price paid to him 
 by the booksellers. 
 
 At present it may be that there is keener relish for 
 
 42
 
 CLAUDE, VANDYKE, OSTADE, HOLLAR 
 
 his work in Germany than here with us in England; 
 but one gi-eat connoisseur, as well as fine practitioner 
 of Etching, of a generation not yet wholly vanished, 
 has extolled and collected him, praising him lately, 
 it is true, in terms more measured than those he 
 had at first employed ; and another connoisseur, not 
 bom in earlier years than Sir Seymour Haden, but 
 earlier cut off, not living indeed to be old — I mean 
 the Rev. J. J. Hey wood, who has been named already 
 — was a devoted student of Hollai-'s endless labours. 
 He prepared in great degree the Burlington Club's 
 Exhibition of a large fine representative collection of 
 Hollar's works, in 1875, and wrote the sympathetic pre- 
 face to the Catalogue. On Hollar, Parthey has long 
 been the chief German authority ; and with Parthey 
 Mr. Heywood was familiar. But his own loving obser- 
 vation of the unremitting work of the gi'eat Bohemian 
 engraver of the Seventeenth Century — a wanderer in 
 Antwerj) and in Strasburg, as well as a long resident in 
 London — furnished him with some material of his own, 
 and the liurlingtoii Club Catalogue of such portion as 
 was exhibited of Hollar's gi-eat volume of production, 
 should be, wherever it is possible, in the hands of the 
 Hollar collector. It will accjuaint him with very manv 
 of the most desirable pieces, and will tell him, in a 
 form more comjMict and serviceable than Purthey's, 
 much about the recent I'cstiiig - places of the rarer 
 Hollar prints. There are a few of Uiese, of course, 
 which cannot j)ass into the hands of any private per- 
 son, or the large plate of Kdhihiir^-h, for examj)le, a 
 
 4-:3
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 thing Parthey had never seen, and which was wrought 
 in Hollar's later time (in 1670), there exist in all the 
 world hut two impressions. One is at Windsor, the 
 other at the British Museum. 
 
 When, however, the collector has got more than two 
 thousand plates to choose from, and to watch and wait 
 for, he need not, save in sheer " cussedness," and he- 
 cause Humanity is built that way, trouble very much 
 about what is for ever inaccessible. I do not think that 
 even a colonial millionaire will set himself the task of 
 collecting Hollar en masse. Life is not long enough. The 
 task would fall more properly to a German student, since 
 patience would be wanted, yet more than money ; but, 
 after half a century of work, the student would pass 
 from us with his self-set task still uncompleted. No : 
 the sensible collector wants of Hollar a compact selec- 
 tion. Such a group as Sir Seymour Haden exhibited at 
 the Fine Art Society's — along with many other plates, 
 representing the masters of original etching — would 
 form a nucleus, at all events. Divided into classes in 
 the following way — Topography, Portraiture, Cos- 
 tume, Natural History, and History, that small ex- 
 hibited gi-oup included the Anhverp Cathedral, the 
 Royal Exchange, the Nave of St. George''s Chapel, 
 Charles the First, Charles the Second, one of the plates 
 of the Muff's — I trust it was the wonderful study of five 
 muffs alone, with the wearer's wrists and arms just 
 lightly indicated — and two of the rare set of Sliells, 
 which are as wonderful as the muffs for texture, but 
 
 somehow a little drier. Of the ])late of the Nave of St. 
 
 44
 
 CLAUDE, VANDYKE, OSTADE, HOLLAR 
 
 George's Chapel, Sir Seymour says that it is the most 
 
 amazing piece of " biting " that he knows, as to gradation 
 
 Andjinessc. xVlong with these plates — if he is fortunate 
 
 enough to get them — or even in place of some of them, 
 
 as his taste prompts him, let the collector appropriate 
 
 the sets of the Seasons and the Buttc7-JIies, the little 
 
 Islington set, known sometimes as Six Views in tlie 
 
 North of London, and the exquisite single plate (these 
 
 topographical plates that I am reconunending are all 
 
 small ones) known as London Jy-om the Top of Arundel 
 
 House. Of the "simple probity" of Hollar's work, 
 
 and of its rightful charm, there will then be ample 
 
 evidence. 
 
 The prices of good Hollars have not of late years 
 
 risen nmch : certainly not much in comparison with 
 
 those of other prints holding positions of about the 
 
 like honour. Much of his work, therefore, is quite 
 
 within the reach of modest and intelligent buyers. 
 
 ITie latest really remarkable collection sold was that 
 
 of Seymour Hadcii, wiio had long possessed many 
 
 njore of Hollar's prints than he found room to exhibit, 
 
 with other men's work, in IJond Street. His greatest 
 
 rarities — perhaps even his best impressions — fetched 
 
 go(xl prices, l)iil, tliev were never sensational : indeed, 
 
 in several instances tbey did not substantially exceed 
 
 those realised twenty-three years earlier (in l.S(j8), at 
 
 .Inlijin Marshall's sale. Tluis, at tlie Julian Mar- 
 
 Hhall sale, the Long View of Greenwich j)assed under 
 
 the hammer at i'l, 15s., and at the Haden sale it sold 
 
 for X'2, .5s. Ij)ndon from the Top of Arundel House, s,\\ 
 
 45
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 impression of singular excellence, fetched £6 in the 
 Marshall sale ; it fetched at the Seymour Haden £9, 
 12s. ; but in this case there is reason to suppose that 
 Sir Seymour's impression, though certainly good, was 
 not equal to ]\lr. Marshall's. Sir TJiomas Challoner 
 (after Holbein) fetched 1^31, 10s. at the IVIarshall sale, 
 and I am not sure that it was not the very same im- 
 pression that afterwards, at Sir Seymour's, fetched only 
 ^20. Each is described as a " First State," and each 
 had belonged in the last century to one of the greatest 
 collectors of his time, John Barnard, whose initials, 
 written in a slow round hand, "J. B.," delight the 
 collector, often, at the back of a fine print. The two 
 impressions of Sir ThomcL^ Challoner were surely really 
 one. The portrait of Hollar, holding his portrait of 
 St. Catherine, reached £6 at the Marshall sale; only 
 ^5 at the Haden. On the other hand, the Chalice, 
 which is said, generally, to be from a design by Man- 
 tegna, was sold for £3, 10s. with Mr. Marshall's things ; 
 for £5, 5s. with Sir Seymour's. We need not make 
 further comparisons; but it will be well to end these 
 comments upon Hollar's money value by some little 
 additional quotation from the priced catalogues of the 
 later and larger sale of his prints. TJie Rake's Lament 
 fetched in 1891 i?22; the Antwerp Cathedral, in the 
 First State, £8 ; that neat little set of six Views about 
 Islington, £2, 10s. (which, if the impressions were all 
 good, was unquestionably cheap) ; the Royal Exchange, 
 in the First State, £\Q ; The Winter Habit of an English 
 
 Gentleman, £8, 10s. ; the set of Sea Sheik, or, rather 
 
 46
 
 CLAUDE, VANDYKE, OSTADE, HOLLAR 
 
 thirty-four out of the thirty-eight numbers that the 
 set contains, £61. Hollar, with such a mass of work 
 to choose from, and with the interest and excellence 
 of much of it, appeals to the collector who can dis- 
 pense, at times, with vehemence and passion, and who 
 finds in quaintness and exactness, in steady technical 
 achievement, some compensation for the absence of a 
 vision of exalted beauty. 
 
 47
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Remhrandt Catalogues — The extent of Rembrandt's 
 etched work — The careful buyer : how may he repre- 
 sent Rembrandt not unworthily ? — Amongst landscape 
 etchings, the indisputable pre-eminence of Rembrandt's 
 landscapes — Their influence on the most modem Art — 
 The landscapes' rarity — The most desirable and attain- 
 able — Prices — The landscapes in the Hoi ford Sale — 
 Rembrandt's portraits — Portraits of himself — The 
 best portraits of others — Recent prices of the portraits 
 — Those fine ones that are cheap essentially — Sacred 
 subjects fust touched on — The Nude — The methods of 
 Rembrandt — Etching and dry-point — Simplicity of the 
 means Rembrandt employed. 
 
 That great old connoisseur of Rouen, Eugene Dutuit, 
 in his two portly tomes, the Giluvre Complet de Rem- 
 brandt (produced in 1883), catalogues for the conveni- 
 ence of the collector three hundred and sixty -three 
 pieces, though, from his long and careful Introduction, 
 it is evident that he is not altogether uninfluenced 
 by modern views, and is willing to discard some few 
 out of that great array of prints. Wilson, the first 
 important English cataloguer, working in 1836, had 
 catalogued three hundred and sixty-nine. Charles 
 Blanc, about a score of years later, had reduced the 
 
 number to three hundred and fifty - three. Again, 
 
 48
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 in 1879, the Rev. C. H. Middleton-Wake had brought 
 the number down to three hundred and twenty-nine. 
 It is hardly likely that before the present chapter is 
 completed — a chapter that must be devoted mainly 
 to the more fascinating works of the gi-eatest mind that 
 ever expressed itself in Etching — I shall have said any- 
 thing of value on what is, for the student, an important 
 (juestion — the question of how much of Rembrandt's 
 long-accepted work the master really executed. For not 
 in a part only of a single chapter of a volume on Fine 
 Prints could it be possible to deal satisfactorily with the 
 arguments for and against certain etchings, the authenti- 
 city of which modern Criticism disputes or doubts about. 
 The matter would require not paragraphs, but a volume. 
 Furthermore, for anything approaching a final settle- 
 ment, it would need such opportunities for comparison 
 as absolutely no one has yet been able to possess. Sir 
 Seymour Ilmlon, whose views upon the subject are more 
 de(ine<l than most people's — if likewise it haj)pens that 
 they are more revolutionary — lias been pleading for a 
 large Exhibition ami a committee of ex})erts to settle 
 the matter, and, at this time of writing, the Exhibition 
 lia-s not lx;en held nor the committee formetl. In regard 
 to it* decision, I anticipate lus likely to be deliveixnl 
 .somewhat earlier, and jwrhaps with more of unanimity, 
 the utterance of Rome ui)on thul (jiicsljoii of "Angli- 
 cjin Oniers," which now either vexes or sympulluticnily 
 engagt-s her. 
 
 Hut if the moujcnt of connois.Hcurs' agreement upon 
 
 the question of the prcci.sc nrmiber of Rembrandt's true 
 
 49 i>
 
 I-INE PRINTS 
 
 etchings seems yet remote, the beginner in the study of the 
 prints of Uembnuult may note with benefit two things : 
 first, that there does exist tlie reasonable and long-sus- 
 tained doubt in regard principally to the "Beggar" 
 antl a few of the Sacred Subjects (for certain landscapes 
 were discarded long ago), and that thus a question has 
 arisen into which the student may inquire cautiously, 
 and, after much preliminary study, exercise his own 
 mind upon ; and, second (and here comes in immediate 
 comfort for the collector), that the doubts thrown on 
 two or three score of prints still leave untouched 
 the plates in which intelligent Criticism has recognised 
 masterpieces. Again, and for his further joy, if the 
 collector be but a beginner, or with a purse not deep, 
 he may note that the masterpieces of Rembrandt are of 
 the most various degrees of rarity ; that accordingly 
 they differ inexpressibly as to the money value that 
 attaches to them ; and that therefore, even now-a-days, 
 thou'di the complete or comprehensive collector of 
 Rembrandt will have to be a rich man, a poor man 
 may yet buy, two or three times in every year, some 
 Rembrandt etching, noble in conception, exquisite in 
 workmanship. 
 
 A volume like the present is not concerned pi'imarily 
 with the acquisitions of the millionaire, though it has, 
 of coui-se, to take account of them. Let us therefore, 
 just at this stage, ask ourselves what the careful, 
 modestly-e(iuipped buyer does well to do, so that in 
 his portfolios so great a master as Rembrandt shall not 
 
 be altogether unrepresented, and shall not be repre- 
 
 50
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 sented unworthily ? Ought the beginner to confine 
 himself at first to making a selection from one or two 
 groups only, out of the number of groups into which, 
 unless chronological order is to over-ride everything, 
 the prints of Rembrandt not unnaturally divide them- 
 selves ? Or ought he to be guided in his choice by 
 some ascertained facts of Rembrandt's history, and by 
 the help of dated plates — or by accepting as fixed and 
 'final the conjectures as to date which have proceeded 
 from the newer connoisseurship — seek some representa- 
 tion of the art of Rembrandt at different times of his 
 career ? Or ought he, instead of either confining him- 
 self to one or two groups or classes of subject, or seek- 
 ing to trace at all, by the few prints of which he may 
 possess himself, the course of Rembrandt's progress, the 
 changes in his method, see rather that in his port- 
 folios all classes of subject shall have something to 
 represent them, so that at least in this manner the 
 range of the master — which is one of the most marked 
 of his characteristics — shall be suggested ? 
 
 The chronological plan, though it has reason on its 
 side and great advantages, and naturally commends 
 itself to the advanced student who is far already on the 
 road to be himself an expert, is scarcely good for the 
 beginner; and this not only because the proper basis 
 of knowledge — the date that is not a shrewd guess, but 
 a quite certain fact — is often wanting ; but also because 
 the master's methods in etching, as in painting, were so 
 many, and in a measure at least (even the most varied 
 
 of them) were contemporaneously exercised, that the 
 
 51
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 attempt to represent ])eri()(Is and manners in a collec- 
 tion numerically in.si<;iiilic!int becomes Quixotic or 
 Aaulemic. Perhajis, then, the wisest thing is to take 
 one or two great tyj)ical groups. For my own part, I 
 should take Portraiture and Landscape ; not of coui'se 
 cramping oneself with such ridiculous limitations as 
 " Portraits of Men," " Portraits of Women "—as if the 
 two, save for convenience of reference, should not 
 invariably be considered together. 
 
 I have said, for one of my two groups, I^andscape. 
 I justify it by the indisputable pre-eminence which 
 Rembrandt's etched landscapes enjoy. Even in the 
 dignified and tasteful work of Claude there are only 
 two or three pieces which hold their own in fascination 
 when the memory is charged with the achievements of 
 the Dutchman — a magical effect won out of material 
 intractable, or at the best simple ; for that, at most, 
 was Rembrandt's scenery. The landscape etchings 
 of Rembrandt's compatriots, when they come to be 
 measured by his own, assert only topographical accu- 
 racy, or faithful persevering study, or, it may be, a 
 little manual dexterity, or their possession of a sense of 
 prettiness which they share even with the work of the 
 amateur. Most of the finest landscape etching of later 
 days not only beai-s some signs of Rembrandt's in- 
 fluence, but would have been essentially other than it 
 now is if Rembrandt's had not existed. The Dutch- 
 man's mark is laid, strong and indelible, even upon 
 individualities so potent and distinguished as Seymour 
 
 Haden and Andrew Geddes. Whistler, exquisite and 
 
 52
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 peculiar as his genius is, with the figure, and with 
 Thames-side London subjects and subjects of Venice, 
 would, had he treated landscape proper, have either 
 reminded us of Rembrandt, or have etched in some 
 wrong way. He would not have etched in some wrong 
 way — we may take that for granted ; he would have 
 reminded us of Rembrandt, with a little of himself 
 besides. 
 
 " I have shown, I think, how clearly, from the artistic 
 point of view, the new collector is led to love and seek 
 for Rembrandt landscapes. But there is one objection, 
 though it is perhaps not a fatal one, to concentrating 
 his attention upon them. Little of Rembrandt's work, 
 except a few oddities of crazy value, like the First 
 State of the Hundred Guilder, is rarer or more costly 
 than his landscapes. Or, to be more explicit, more 
 absolutely and literally correct, it is rather in this way: 
 that, while for a good example of Rembrandt in any 
 other depai'tment of his labours, it is possible of course 
 to be obliged to give much, but likewise (Heaven be 
 praised !) quite possible not to be obliged to give much, 
 you will never without an outlay of a certain impor- 
 tance be possessed of any one of his landscapes in 
 desirable condition. An outlay of i?30 may con- 
 ceivably endow you with a good impression of one of 
 the two most desirable, and, as it happens, least rare, 
 of the minor landscapes. That sum may get you, 
 and without your having to wait a quite indefinite 
 time for the uc(juisition, a V'wio of Amsterdam or a 
 
 Cottage zc'iih ]Vhite Paliugs. Tl may even get you a 
 
 63
 
 FINE PRIMES 
 
 rarer but much slighter landscape piece — that sum- 
 mary, thougli of course in its own way very learned, 
 little performance known as S'hvs Bridge; the plate 
 which tradition says (probably not untruly) was etched 
 by llembrandt while the servant of his friend, Jan Six, 
 who had forgotten the mustard, went (somewhere 
 beyond the pantry, however ; I should even think that 
 it was outside the house), in rapid search of that con- 
 diment. 
 
 But there, as far as landscape is concerned, if JOiiO 
 or thereabouts is to be the limit of your disburse- 
 ment upon a single piece, there your collecting 
 stops. If you want a Cottage xvith Dutch Hay-Barn 
 — very fine indeed, but not of extreme rarity — sixty, 
 eighty, or a hundred pounds, or more, must be the 
 ransom of it. You want a Landscape with a Ruined 
 Tower — the print which, for well-considered breadth 
 and maintained unity of effect (not so much for dainty 
 finish) is the " last word " of landscape art, the perfect 
 splendid phrase which nothing can appropriately follow, 
 after which there is of necessity declension, if not col- 
 lapse — it will be a mere accident if fifty guineas gets it 
 for you. It may cost you a couple of hundred. And 
 when '^ Why, only when a fine collection comes into 
 the market : such a collection as Mr. Holford's, three or 
 four years ago, or one at least not at all points inferior 
 to it. And that haj)pens not many times in the life of 
 any one of us. Again, there is the GoUhceiglier''s Fieldy 
 a bird's-eye view of a plain near the Zuyder Zee ; a 
 
 summary, learned memorandum of the estate and 
 
 64
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 countrj-house, with all its appurtenances, of Uyten- 
 bogaert, the Receiver-General, of whom there is a 
 representation amongst the Rembrandt portraits. If 
 you can afford it, and if fortune smiles upon you by 
 bestowing opportunity of acquisition, you will want 
 not only the less costly portrait of the Goldzveiffher, 
 but the landscape of the Goldweighers Field. There 
 are rarer things than that in Rembrandt's work — not 
 ^much that is more desirable. i?44< was paid for an 
 impression, probably not quite of the first order, at the 
 Firmin-Didot sale, £5'^ at the Liphart, £19. at the 
 Ilolford. The landscapes yet more difficult to find, 
 command, of course, even higher prices, and this some- 
 what independently of their artistic interest, which 
 only in a very few cases — and then with very excep- 
 tional impressions — equals that of the prints I have 
 already named. 
 
 Of these yet rarer landscapes, as well as the other 
 ones, Mr. Holford's collection was certainly the finest 
 dispersed in recent times. His sale took place at 
 Christie's in July 1893 ; and at it, for the Viexc of 
 Omval — an exceptionally sjilendid impression of a some- 
 what favourite yet not extraordinarily rare subject — 
 £^9.0 was paid by M. Bouillon. The subject, though 
 in impressions of very different cjuality, had been sold 
 in the Sir Abraham Hume sale for ci?47, and in the 
 Duke of Buccleuch's for 0^44. £\10 was paid for the 
 Three Trees, the one llembrandt landscajic which hsis 
 a touch of the sensational, which adds to its real 
 
 merit the obvious and immediate attractiveness of the 
 
 55
 
 FINE rillNTS 
 
 dramatic ofFect. Ilcrr Mcdcr, the dealer of Berlin, 
 
 boiifrht the Fii-st State of The Three Cottages for .£275. 
 
 The sum of i;'210 was the ransom of the First State 
 
 of the sli<;htly arched print A Village with the Square 
 
 To'iCcr. The impression, which was from the Aylesford 
 
 collection, was of unparalleled brilhance, and the 
 
 State is of extraordinary rarity, though M. Dutuit 
 
 notes its presence at Amsterdam and at the British 
 
 Museum. To M. Bouillon was knocked down for i?260 
 
 a faultless impression of TJie Canal, a print which at 
 
 the Galichon sale had passed under the hammer for 
 
 ii'SO, and even at the Buccleuch for ,£'120. Messi-s. 
 
 Colnaghi bought for i?145 a most sparkling impression 
 
 of tlie rare First State of the broadly treated Landseape 
 
 uith a Ruined Turcrr, more properly called by the 
 
 French cataloguei-s Paysage a la Tour, for in this First 
 
 State there is no sign of "ruin." Doubtless when the 
 
 title by which it is known in England was first applied 
 
 to it, the amateur was unfamiliar with this rarest State, 
 
 in which the dome of the tower is intact. In the 
 
 Second State it has disappeared, and in the Third there 
 
 are other minor changes. Tlie reader will remember 
 
 that already, two or three j)ages back, I have referred 
 
 to this print as a masterpiece, than which none is more 
 
 desirable or more representative. A perfect impression 
 
 of the Lamhcapc xcith a Flock of Sheep (from the John 
 
 Bariiiird collection) sold for £^245; the First State of 
 
 the Landscape with an Obelisk for cf'lSo; an Orchard 
 
 with a Barn (the early State, before the plate was cut 
 
 at cither end) for ^170; and the First State of the 
 
 56
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 Landscape uith a Boat — an impression extraordinarily 
 full of " bur "—for o£^200. Altogether, the Rembrandts 
 in the Holford sale — and I shall have to refer to some of 
 them again before I finish the chapter — sold for .£'16,000. 
 Richard Fisher's Rembrandts had fetched about 
 ^1500; Sir Abraham Hume's, <f4000; Sir Seymour 
 Haden''s, .£'4700 ; the Duke of Buccleuch's, something 
 over ,£'10,000. The last is a figure which was never 
 -expected to be surpassed — hardly, perhaps, to be 
 equalled. Yet it was surpassed very much. 
 
 But now it is high time I said a little about the 
 desirableness of Rembrandt })ortraits and about their 
 money value. No engraved portraiture in all the 
 world, not even the mezzotints after Sir Joshua, pre- 
 sent with so much power so gi'eat a range of varied 
 character. For an artistic treatment of Humanity 
 equally sterling and austere, you must go back to 
 Holbein's drawings. For a variety as engaging, a 
 vividness and flexibility as sure of their effect, only 
 the pastels by La Tour in the Museum of St. Quentin 
 rival these Rembrandt records of Jew and Gentile, old 
 and young, and rich and poor in Amsterdam. 
 
 As in painting, so in etching, Rembrandt was him- 
 self one of his best models. In no less than thirty- 
 four of his prints — according to the Catalogue of 
 Wilson — do we find he has portrayed, at different 
 ages, his homely, striking, penetrating face. Some- 
 times he is a youth ; sometimes the burden of exj)erience 
 is visibly laid on him ; sometimes he is engrossed with 
 work, c'ls in the superb Hnnhrcmdt Drau'iv>r ; some- 
 
 57
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 times, as in the Rembrandt icith a Sabn; masquerading ; 
 sometimes he is depicted with great fuhiess of record ; 
 sometimes, as in the admirable Httle rarity, Wilson 
 set (not catalogued amongst the Ren)brandt portraits, 
 because the plate has other heads as well), a few lines, 
 chosen with the alacrity and certainty of genius, bring 
 him before us, sturdy, sagacious, and with mind bent 
 upon a problem he is sure to solve. The Rembrandt 
 with a Sabre, at the Holford sale — a thing almost 
 unique — fell to the bid of M. Deprez of i?2000, and 
 has joined now the other extraordinary possessions of 
 Baron Edmond De Rothschild. At the Holford sale, 
 the Rembrandt rcith a Turned-up Hat and Embroidered 
 Mantle — an almost unique First State, drawn on by 
 Rembrandt, but none the better on that account — 
 fetchal i?420. Of the Rembrandt Draxcing there were 
 two impressions. One of thein, which Mr. Middleton- 
 Wake assures us is the First, and which Wilson justly 
 describes as at all events " the finest," sold for dP280 to 
 Hen- Meder. The impression was of unmatched brilliancy 
 and vigour, the whole thing as spontaneous and im- 
 pulsive as anything in RembrandTs work. The second 
 impression sold — an impression to which the honours 
 of a true Second State are now assigned — fetched ,£'82, 
 and was borne away by Mr. Gutekunst of Stuttgart. 
 
 That famous Holford sale, in which, as I have said 
 already, the Rembrandt xoith tlie Sabre sold for a couple 
 of thousand, and in which the "Hundred Guilder" 
 {Christ Healing the Sick) beat at least its own record, 
 
 and was sold for i?1750, contained among the portraits 
 
 58
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 an impression of the elaborate Epliraim BonuSy "with 
 the black ring," the only one with this singular and 
 somewhat petty distinction which could ever come 
 into the market ; the remaining impressions being tied 
 up permanently at the British IMuseum and the Bib- 
 liotheque Nationale. M. Danlos took it across the 
 Channel, having paid £\^50 for the opportunity of 
 doing so. The Burgomaster Sicr, an almost mezzotint- 
 like portrait in general effect — highly wrought, and 
 with an obvious delicacy — always fetches a high price. 
 At the Holford sale an impression called "Second 
 State " fell to Colnaghi's bid of i'SSO. At the Sey- 
 mour Haden, one called a "Third" — a very exquisite 
 impression — reached i?390. It came from the collection 
 of Sir Abraham Hume, and Sir Seymour, in the Preface 
 to his sale catalogue, properly pointed out that with 
 the jSV-r, as with the Ephrabn Bonus, what are practi- 
 cally trial-proofs have been erected into " States." The 
 lliird State of the Old Haaring; a portrait of a 
 venerable, kindly, perhaps ceremonious gentleman, who 
 practised the profession of an auctioneer, is scarcely 
 less rare than the rest. When found among the Hol- 
 ford treasures, it sold for X'190. 
 
 For nearly the same price the benign })ortrait of 
 John Lutma, the goldsmith — an impression in the 
 Fii-st State, however, " before the window and the 
 bottle " — passed into the hands of the same buyer. 
 That plate — one of the most admirable in the work of 
 Rembrandt — uHbrds, in its First State, an instance of the 
 
 artificial advantage of iiicie i-arity. Because certain 
 
 59
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 collectors arc jicciistoiiKcI to sec it more or less worn, 
 with the window and the bottle behind the seated 
 fi<^ure, they will never give for it, even when it is not 
 worn — if the window and the bottle happen to be 
 there — one-third the sum that they pay willin«;ly when 
 those objects are absent, whicli Rembrandt knew were 
 wanted to complete the composition. Now, in the 
 case of the Great Jcxcish Bride — a portrait really of 
 Rembrandt's wife, Saskia, with flowing hair — the 
 backgi'ound is a loss, clearly, the earlier State being 
 invariably the finer and the more spontaneous. With 
 the Ltitma it is not so. There is no doubt that the 
 additions add charm, add luminousness, to the general 
 effect ; but the fine eye is wanted, the eye of the real 
 ex})ert, to see to it that the impression which contains 
 these is yet an impression in which deterioration is 
 not visible — that it is, in fact, one of the very earliest 
 impressions after the additions had been made. 
 
 To make an end of the record of gi-eat prices fetched 
 by the portraits in the Holford sale, let it be said 
 that the Cornelius Syhmi.s — the im])ression Wilson pro- 
 nounced to be the finest — sold fori?4<50 ; that a Second 
 State of the rare, and on that account, as I suppose, the 
 favourite portrait of the Advocate Van Tolling, fetched 
 X*o30 ; whilst an exceedingly effective impression of 
 the big portrait of Coppenol, the writing-master, 
 realised no less than -£^1350. 
 
 But without touching any one of these great rarities, 
 modest collectors, whose mo<lesty yet does not go the 
 length of making them satisfied with second-rate Art,
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 may still have noble portraits. Six or seven guineas — 
 I mean, of course, when opportunity arises — secures 
 you the quite exquisite and delicately modelled croquis 
 (but is it not, after all, something more than acroqim?) 
 called Portrait of a Woman, ligJitly etched. Rem- 
 brandt was very young when he did that, yet his art 
 was mature, his point unspeakably vivacious. It is a 
 })orti'ait of his mother. So again, the Mae de Rem- 
 brandt au voile noir — the lady sitting, somewhat austere 
 this time, with set mouth, and the old full-veined 
 hands folded in rest — never, I think, in its happiest 
 impression costs more than d£'20— may very likely cost 
 you a good deal less. Ten guineas will very likely be 
 the ransom of that charming portrait of a boy-child in 
 profile, which was once thought to record the features 
 of Titus, Rembrandt's son, and then those of the little 
 Prince of Orange. It is a delightful vision of youth, 
 demure and chubby, and in its dainty drawing of light 
 and silky hair, does even Whistler's Fanny Leyland rival 
 it .'' Are^ you disposed to venture c£'30, i?40, £50 .? 
 Then may you, in due time, add to your group a 
 First State of the most subtle portrait of that medita- 
 tive print-seller, Clement deJonffJic. It is treated with 
 singular breadth and luminousness, and of character 
 it is a profound revelation. By the time the Third 
 State is reached — and a good Third State may 
 !)e worth fifteen or twenty pounds — the thing has 
 changed. Indeed, it has changed already a little in 
 the Second, liut in the Tbirtl, further work has 
 
 endowed the [Hirsonage with the air of a more visible 
 
 CI
 
 FINE PllINTS 
 
 i-onmnce; and in the two sucfecding States this is 
 preserved, tliough the wear of course becomes per- 
 ceptible. It is well, by way of contrast, to possess 
 yourself of this more sentimental record — the Third, 
 if possible, in preference to the Fourth or Fifth state — 
 besides, of course, that subtler and far finer vision 
 of the personage which is ensured by the First State 
 alone. The time may soon be upon us when a First 
 State of Clement dc Jonghc will be worth, not thirty 
 or forty, but sixty or eighty guineas. It has always 
 l)een appreciated, but it has not yet been appreciated 
 at its true worth. Nothing in all the gi-eat etched 
 work of Rembrandt is in craftsmanship more unob- 
 trusively magnificent, and in its suggestion of complex 
 character nothing is more subtle. 
 
 It was well, perhaps, to insist particularly on the 
 desirableness, for study and possession, of these two 
 great branches of the etched work of Rembrandt, the 
 Landscapes and the Portraits. It would be ridiculous 
 to attack the authenticity of any piece that I have 
 mentioned. No one, so far as I am aware, has ever 
 thought of doing so ; so tliat with these, at all events, 
 as well as with many others, the collector is safe. 
 But my insistence on the things I have selected will 
 not deter explorers from adventures that interest them. 
 The unction, the vividne.ss, and the essential dignity 
 even of those Sacred Subjects from which he is at first 
 repelled by the presence there so abundantly of the 
 ungainly and the common, will in the end attract the 
 
 collector. He will recognise that there was pathos in 
 
 62

 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 the life Rembrandt imagined, as well as in the life 
 that he obsened. And in the Academical studies, the 
 representations of the Nude, he will recognise that 
 there is Style constantly, and beauty now and then. 
 One or two of these, at least, he will like to have, if 
 he can. Two of them seem to me better and more 
 desirable than the rest. One is that study of a re- 
 cumbent woman — Naked Woynan seen from behind — 
 <vhich the French sometimes call Negresse couchee ; 
 but she is not " Negress "" at all, but only a stripped 
 woman beheld in deepish shadow. This is one of the 
 least rare. Five or six pounds will often buy it. The 
 other is the ]Voman with the Arrow. A slimmer, 
 lighter, younger woman than is usual with Rembrandt, 
 sits, with figure turned prettily, on the edge of a bed. 
 The drawing is not academically perfect, but the 
 picture is at least living flesh, graceful of pose, and 
 seen in an admirable arrangement of shadow and of 
 light. This Woman with the Arrow fetched, in the 
 Kalle sale, £9.Q ; in the Knowles sale, £2>% 
 
 The so-called "Free Subjects" are few, and the 
 iTjdest of them, Ledikant, which has yet a touch of 
 comedy in it (for Rembrandt was an observer always), 
 is fortunately of extreme rarity. With not a single one 
 of these ought the collector to be concerned. Some 
 French artists have known how to make their choice 
 of such subjects pardonal)le by treating them with 
 grace ; but the eroticism of Rembrandt — happily most 
 occasional — is, in the very grossncss of its obvious 
 
 comedy, reeking with offence. 
 
 68
 
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 In rcnjard to the avraiifijcnient of the prints by the 
 master wlio is the head and front of the Dutch school, 
 and the consummate practitioner of Etching — I mean, 
 the arrangement in the student's mind, and not only 
 the arrangement in the solander box — the question of 
 the artist's method of execution plays a not unimportant 
 part. Are you to classify your possessions in order of 
 date, or in accordance with subject, or with reference 
 to style and manner of work ? That third method, 
 however, would be found in its result not very different 
 from the arrangement by date. Broadly speaking, it 
 would have affinity with that. For, as Sir Seymour 
 Haden tells us in an interesting Lecture called 
 "llembrandt True and False," which the Macmillans 
 issued in 1895, the Burlington Club Exhibition was 
 itself sufficient "to disclose the interesting fact that, 
 dividing the thirty years of Rembrandt's etching career 
 into three parts or decades, his plates during the first 
 of these decades were for the most part etched — 
 "bitten in," that is, by a mordant — in the second, 
 that after having been so bitten in, their effect was 
 enhanced by the addition of " dry-point ; "" and in the 
 third, that, discarding altogether the colder chemical 
 process, the artist had generally depended on the more 
 painter-like employment of "dry-point alone." And 
 in regard to methods of work. Sir Seymour in this 
 I^ecture discredited the statement that Rembrandt was 
 full of mysterious contrivances, and that his success as 
 an etcher owed much to these. " All the great painter- 
 engravers, in connnon with all great artists, worked 
 
 64
 
 REMBRANDT 
 
 simply and with the simplest tools. It is only the 
 mechanical engraver and copyist who depends for what 
 he calls his ' quality ' on a multiplicity of instrumental 
 aids which, in fact, do the work for him — the object 
 of the whole of them being to make that work as easy 
 to an assistant as to the engraver himself, and its 
 inevitable effect, to reduce that which was once an 
 art to the level of a metier.'''' 
 
 65
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Geddes, a link hetween Rembrandt and. the French 
 Revival — The Etchings of Millet — Charles Meryon's 
 work — 7'he best, accomplished in but few years — His 
 ^'Paris'' — The Mtfryons the Collector 7vants — The 
 prices of some masterpieces — Papers — Mcryon Collec- 
 tors — Bracquemond's few noble things — Jides Jacque- 
 marCs Etchings — His still-life pieces practically original 
 — Jacqucmarl irderpreter, not copyist, of his snibjcct — 
 The " Porcelaine" — The " Gemmes et Joyaux" — The 
 dry-points of Paul Helleu. 
 
 Betwkkn the period of the work of Rembrandt and the 
 middle of the Eighteenth Century very little fine work 
 was done in Etching. The practitioners of the art, 
 such as they were, seemed to lose sight of its gi'eater 
 principles. What they lacked in learning and in 
 mastery, they made up for — so they probably thought 
 — by elaboration and prettiness. Only here and there 
 did such a man as our English Geddes — our Scottish 
 Geddes, if the word is liked better — and he not later 
 than the second and third decades of our own century 
 — produce either portrait or landscape in the true 
 method, with seeming spontaneity, with means econo- 
 mised. It was in landscape chiefly — most particularly 
 in Oft Pcrkham Rye and Halliford-oji- Thames — that 
 Geddes most successfully asserted himself, as, in his
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 smaller way, Reinbranclfs true follower, though in his 
 few portraits (his mother^s, perhaps, most notably) the 
 right decisiveness, simplicity, and energy of manner 
 may not be overlooked. In some measure, it may 
 be supposed, Geddes influenced David Wilkie, who 
 was his friend, and Wilkie, amongst several etchings 
 which were inferior at least to the dry-points of 
 his fellow- work man (for his small portfolio is not, 
 on the whole, worth nmch), produced one or two 
 memorable things : a perfect little genre piece, called 
 Tlie Receipt — an old-world gentleman searching in a 
 bureau, while a messenger waits respectfully at his 
 side — being by far the best, and obviously a desirable 
 possession. 
 
 But the middle of our century had to be i-eached 
 before the true revival of the art of Etching, anywhere. 
 Before it, Ingres, in a single plate, practised the art in 
 the spirit of the line-engraver. Just as it approached, 
 Delacroix and Paul Huet and Theodore Rousseau 
 showed, in a few ])Iates, some ap})reciation of the fact 
 that etching is often serviceable chiefly as the medium 
 for a sketch. But the middle of the century had 
 actually to an-ive before the world was in ])ossession of 
 the best performances of Millet, Meryon, Brac(|uemond, 
 and Jules Jac(juemart. 
 
 Jean Fran(;ois Millet executed but one-and- twenty 
 
 etchings, according to the Catalogue of Monsieur 
 
 Lebrun, the frienti and relative of Sensier, Millet's 
 
 biographer. Of M. Eebrun's Catalogue — originally 
 
 issued as an Appendix to the Paris edition of Sensier's 
 
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 FINE PRINTS 
 
 Life of the artist — Mr. Frederick Keppel, of New York, 
 has published a translation, with some additional facts 
 which are of interest to the precise student. The 
 etchings of Millet are, at the very least, masterly notes 
 of motives for his painted jiictures. But they are 
 often much more than that. Often they are entirely 
 satisfactory and final and elucidatory dealings with the 
 themes they choose to tackle. They are then, cjuite as 
 nmch as the pictures themselves, records of peasant 
 life, as the artist observed it intimately, and at the 
 same time vivid and expressive suggestions of atmos- 
 phere and light and shade. In effect they are large 
 and simple. In Etching, Millet was scarcely concerned 
 to display a skill that was very obvious, a sleight-of- 
 hand, an acrobatic triumph over technical difficulties. 
 Etching was to him a vehicle for the expression of 
 exactl}' the same things as those to which he addressed 
 himself in mediums more habitual. And so we have 
 his Glaneuscs and his Becheurs, his Depart pour le 
 Travail — worth perhaps, each one of them, in good 
 state, a very few pounds each. In America Millet has 
 of late years been particularly appreciated. I should 
 dare to say even that he has been oveiTated, owing to 
 a skilfully-worked craze about his painted pictures, end- 
 ing with the immense, ridiculous sensation of the sale 
 of the Angelm. But in France — which, in the appre- 
 ciation of all work of art, is certainly not less en- 
 lightened, but is cooler and more questioning — Millet 
 is also appreciated ; nor, in England, in 1891, was there 
 
 substantial difliculty in boiTowing for the Burlington 
 
 68
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 Club Exhibition of the French Revival of Etching, 
 the eleven prints, lent by Mr. Justice Day, Sir Hickman 
 Bacon, Mr. H. S. Theobald, and ]Mr. Alfred Higgins, 
 which were deemed a sufficient representation of Millet's 
 work with the needle. 
 
 In that Exhibition the representation of the great 
 work of Mt^ryon was confined to twenty-five prints. 
 It practically included all his masterpieces ; but it 
 would have been made more extensive had not the 
 Burlington Club, soon after I published the first edi- 
 tion of my little book upon this master — and when 
 Burty's Memoir was yet fresh — organised a splendid 
 gathering of the prints we owe to Meryon's high ima- 
 gination, keen sensitiveness, and unstinted labour. 
 
 I am not concerned to deal here at any length with 
 the story of Meryon's life, or with the analysis of 
 his poetic temperament. The question asked about 
 him by the reader of this present book is a compara- 
 tively simple one, but I shall have to answer it with 
 fulness — which to possess of the " sombre epics,"" and 
 lovely lyrics, wrought during the time in which his 
 spirit was most brilliant and his hand firmest .'' 
 
 Meryon's fame rests on the achievements of a very 
 few years. The period comprised between 1850 and 
 1854 saw the production, not indeed of everything he 
 did which may deserve to live, but of all that is suffi- 
 cient to ensure life for the rest. Many of his pretty 
 and carefully planned drawings were made earlier than 
 1850, and several of the more engaging of his etchings 
 
 were made after 1854 ; but the four years between 
 
 ()9
 
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 these dates were tlie years in which he conceived and 
 executed his " Paris,'' which was something more than 
 a collection of etched views — it was a poem and a 
 satirical commentary on the life he recorded. More- 
 over, Mcrvon is ([uite pre-eminently the etcher of one 
 great theme. Among richly endowed artists who have 
 looked at I-.ife broadly, it is rare and difficult to discover 
 one whose work has evidenced such faithful concentra- 
 tion. It is rare enough to find that concentration even 
 in the labour of such artists as are comparatively un- 
 imaginative, of such as are content to confine them- 
 selves to the patient record of the thing that actually 
 is — of such an engraver, say, as Hollar. It is doubly 
 rare to find an imaginative artist of wide outlook and 
 of deep experience so much the recorder of one set 
 of facts, one series of visions. He will generally have 
 been anxious to give form to very different impressions 
 that came to him at various times and under changing 
 circumstances. Now it may have been Landscape that 
 interested him, and now Portraiture, and now again 
 ideal composition or traditional romance. And in each 
 he mav have fairly succeeded. But Meryon, though 
 stress of circumstance obliged him to do work beyond 
 the limits of his choice, did such work, generally speak- 
 ing, with only too little of promptings from within, to 
 lighten the dulness of the task. There are, of course, 
 exceptions — one or two in his Landscape, if there are 
 none in his Portraiture. But the beginning and the 
 end of his art, as far as the world can be asked to be 
 
 seriously concerned with it, lay in the imaginative 
 
 70
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 i-ecord, now faithfully simple, now transfigured and 
 nobly visionary, of the city which requited him but ill 
 for his devotion to its most poetic and its most prosaic 
 features. It is the etchings of Paris, then, that the 
 collector will naturally first seek. 
 
 Nearly all the etchings of Paris are included in what 
 is sometimes known as " the published set." Not that 
 the twelve major and the eleven minor pieces comprised 
 in that were ever really published by fashionable print- 
 sellers to an in(j[uiring and eager public. But they 
 were at least so arranged and put together that this 
 might have hap})ened had Mcryon's star been a lucky 
 one. In Mervon\s mind they constituted a " work," to 
 which the few other Parisian subjects afterwards came 
 as a not unsuitable addition. Like the plates of 
 "Liber Studioruni," they were to be looked at "to- 
 gether." Together, the plates of " I^iber " represented, 
 as we shall see better in another chapter, the range of 
 Turner's art. Together, the etchings " sur Paris " — 
 "on" and not "of" Paris, let it be noted — represented 
 Meryon's vision of the town, and of its deeper life. 
 
 In beginning a collection of Meryon's, I imagine it 
 
 to be important not only to begin with one of the 
 
 " Paris," but with a very significant example of it — a 
 
 typical, important etching. The twelve views — the 
 
 twelve " pictures," I should prefer to call them — 
 
 Meryon himself numbered, when, rather late in life, he 
 
 issued the last impressions of them. These numbercnl 
 
 impressions, being, us 1 say, the very last States, are 
 
 not the imjjressions to cherish ; but these are the 
 
 71
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 subjects of them (and the subjects, in finer impressions, 
 will all be wanted) — the Strygc, the Petit Pont^ the 
 Archc du Pont Notrc-Damc, tlie Galerie de Notre- 
 Dame, the Ihur de VHorhgc, the Toiirellc^ Rtie de la 
 Tixcrmidcric^ the St. Etienne-du- Mont, the Pompe 
 Notrc-Dame, the Pont Neuf, the Pont-au-Change, the 
 Morgue, and, lastly, the Abs'ide de Notre-Dame. Before 
 these, between them, and again at the end of them, are 
 certain minor designs, not to be confused with that 
 " Minor Work," chiefly copies and dull Portraiture, 
 described but briefly in my little book on Meryon, 
 which is devoted more particularly to the work of 
 genius with which it is worth while to be concerned. 
 Those minor designs which are associated with the 
 "Paris" are an essential part of it, doing humble, 
 but, as I am certain Meryon thought, most neces- 
 sary service. In a sense they may be called head- 
 pieces and tail-pieces to the greater subjects of which 
 the list lies above. Sometimes they are ornament, but 
 always significant, symbolic ornament ; sometimes they 
 are direct, written commentary. Either way, they bear 
 upon the whole, but yet are less important than those 
 twelve pieces already named. So it was, at all events, 
 in Meryon's mind ; but of one or two of them it is true 
 also that they have a beauty and perfection within 
 their limited scheme, lacking to one or two of the more 
 important, to which they serve humbly as page or out- 
 rider. The one lyric note of the Rue des Mmivavi 
 GarfOTus, for instance, is in its own way as complete a 
 
 thing as is the magnificent epic of Abside or Morgue — 
 
 72
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 it is gi'eater far than the Pompe Notre-Dame^ or, it may 
 be, than the Petit Pont. The late Mr. P. G. Hamer- 
 ton — an admirable specialist in Etching, but a writer 
 making no claim to the nan-ower speciality of minute 
 acquaintance with Meryon — has praised the Pompe 
 Notre-Dame. He has praised it for merits which 
 exist, and it is only relatively that the praise is, as it 
 seems to me, undeserved. The plate is really a wonder- 
 " ful victory over technical difficulties ; but, in the ugly 
 lines of it, its realism is realism of too bold an order. 
 The Petit Pont is a fine piece of architectural draughts- 
 manship, and an impressive conception to boot; but, 
 like Rembrandt's wonderfully wrought Mill, it is one- 
 sided — it wants symmetry of composition. 
 
 The Ahside is accounted the masterpiece of Meryon, 
 in right of its solemn and austere beauty. A rich and 
 delicate impression of this print is, then, the crown of 
 any Meryon collection. It must be obtained in a State 
 before the dainty detail of the apse of the cathedral, 
 and the yet daintier and more magically delicate 
 workmanship of its roof, in soft and radiant light, 
 have suffered deterioration through wear. It must be 
 richly printed. The First State is practically not to 
 be found. I suppose that there are scarcely in exist- 
 ence seven or eight impressions of it. It is at the 
 British Museum, and in the collections of Mr. B. B. 
 Macgcorge, Mr. Avery, Mr. Mansfield, Mr. R. C. 
 Fisher, and Mr. I'yke Tlu)inj)son. For the last that 
 changed hands, fully 125 guineas was ])aid. Meryon 
 had received for it — and gratefully, in his depression 
 
 7;j
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 and poverty — one sliilling and threepence. I have 
 seen his receij)t. But money now will not ac(|uire it. 
 A Second State is therefore the one to aim at ; and, 
 just because there were so very few impressions taken 
 of the First, that I ought, in my Catalogue, to have 
 described them as proofs — more especially as there was 
 no change whatever in the work, but only in the 
 lettering — it stands to reason that the earliest and 
 best impressions of the Second (I mean these only) 
 are, in their exquisite qualitv, all that good judges 
 can desire. These are on thin and wiry paper — old 
 Dutch or French — often a little cockled. The gi'een, 
 or greenisli, paper Meryon was fond of, he never used 
 for the Ab.s'idc. The poorer impressions of the Second 
 State are on thick modern paper. After the Second 
 State, which, when carefully chosen, is apt to be so 
 beautiful — and is worth, then,. forty or fift}' guineas — 
 there comes a Third, a Fourth, a Fifth : none, for- 
 tunately, common ; and deteriorations, all of them ; 
 downward steps in the passage from noble Art to 
 the miserable issue of a thing which can rejoice the 
 soul no longer, nor evidence the triumph of the 
 hand. 
 
 Not much more need be said in detail here as to the 
 larger prints of the great " Paris," but there is still a 
 little. In the shape and si/e of the plate, and by its 
 breadth of distant view, the Pont-au-Chaiiffe is the 
 companion to the Ah.s'ide. There are some impres- 
 sions on the greenish paj)er, and some on the thin 
 
 Dutch that yields the best of the Absidci. The im- 
 
 74
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 pression of the First State in the De Salicis Sale sold 
 for c£'33. The Pont-au-Change is one of those prints 
 which have submitted to the most serious alterations. 
 A wild flight of giant birds against the rolling sky is 
 the first innovation — it occurs in the Second State — 
 and though it removes from the picture all its early 
 calm and half its sanity, it has, as many think, a charm 
 of its own, a weird suggestiveness. A good impression, 
 "in this State, is worth, it may be, =C6 or =£^7. The next 
 change — when the flight of birds gives place to a flight 
 of small balloons (unlike the large balloon which, in the 
 First State, sails nobly through the sky, before ever the 
 dark birds get there) — the next change, I say, is a 
 more pronounced mistake. The Tour de VHorlugc — 
 of which a First State fetched in the Wasset Sale £\0, 
 and in the De Salicis oC22 — has also submitted to 
 change, but scarcely in a State in which it need 
 occupy the careful collector. In certain late impres- 
 sions, Mcryon, convinced, in the restlessness of mental 
 ill-health, that one side of the tall Palais de Justice was 
 left in his picture monotonous and dull, shot great 
 shafts of light across it, and these became the things 
 that caught the eye. He had forgotten, then, the 
 earlier wisdom ;ui(l more consummate art by which, 
 when first he wrought the plate, he had placed the 
 quiet space of sliadovvcd buikling us a foil lo the 
 many-j)aned window by the side of it. The change 
 is an instructive ;uul pathetic conunentary on the 
 ease with which artistic conceptions slij) away, they 
 
 themselves forgotten, and the excellence that they 
 
 75
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 had beautifully achieved ignored even by the mind 
 that gave them birth. 
 
 The St. Etknne-du-Mont is one of those etchings 
 which possess the abiding charm of perfect things. In 
 it a subject entirely beautiful and dignified is treated 
 with force and with refinement of spirit, and with 
 faultless exactitude of hand. It shows — nothing can 
 better show — the characteristic of Meryon, the union 
 of the courage of realism and the sentiment of poetry ; 
 in other words, its realism, like the realism of the 
 finest Fiction, has to be poetic. You have the builder^s 
 scaffolding, the workmen's figures, for modern life and 
 labour ; the Gothic stones of the College de Montaigu, 
 the shadow of the narrow street, the closely-draped 
 women huri'ying on their way, for old-world senti- 
 ment and the mystery of the town. But I suppose a 
 chapter might be written upon its excellent beauty. 
 I mention it here, partly because it too submits to 
 change, though change less important than that in 
 the Pont-au-Change, and less destructive than that in 
 the Tour de VHorloge. Not to speak of sundry in- 
 scriptions, sundry " posters," which Meryon, in mere 
 restlessness, was minded to altei\ he could never quite 
 satisfy himself about the attitude of one of the work- 
 men on the scaffolding. Three States represent as 
 many changes in this figure, and all these — as a matter, 
 at all events, of minor interest — it is pleasant to collect. 
 Here, in the St. Etienne, as so often in the etchings 
 of Meryon, the First State (<f 16 in the De Salicis Sale) 
 
 is the one of which the impressions are the most 
 
 76
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 numerous, though even in this piece of writing, which 
 does not take the place of a catalogue, I have had 
 occasion to note one instance out of some in which it 
 is not so. But generally it is so. And so the Meryon 
 collector has to be even more careful than the collector 
 of " Liber " about the impression which he buys. He 
 must have an early State, but it is not enough to have 
 an early State. He must most diligently teach himself 
 'to perceive what is really a fine example of it. He 
 must not fall into the commonest vice of the unin- 
 telligent purchaser — be captivated by the mere word, 
 forego his own judgment, and buy First States with 
 dull determination. 
 
 Presently the collector of the " Paris " will leffi- 
 timately want the smaller pieces, some of which I have 
 called " tail-pieces "*"* : all are commentaries and con- 
 necting-links. Some are beautiful, complete, and signi- 
 ficant, as has already been said, but generally the 
 significance is more remarkable than the beauty. They 
 bind together, almost as an appropriate text itself 
 might bind together, what might otherwise be detached 
 pictures. They complete the thought of Meryon in 
 regard to his " Paris," and make its ex})ression clear. 
 Thus, the etched cover for the Paris Set bears the title, 
 " Eaux Fortes sur Paris,*" on a representation of a slab 
 of fossiliferoiis limestone, suggesting the material which 
 matle it possible to buikl the city on the spot where 
 it stands. Then, there is a set of etched verses wholly 
 without other ornament than may be found in their 
 
 j)rettily-fanta.stic form, verses that bewail the life of 
 
 77
 
 riNE PRINTS 
 
 Pnris. Again, lines to acconipixny tlie Pont- an- Change 
 and its great balloon. These things recall William 
 Blake — the method by which the " Songs of Innocence " 
 first fonnd their limited pnblic. Again, the Tomheau 
 ile Molihr — Meryon thinks there must be place in his 
 Paris for the one representative French writer of 
 imaginative Literature, the cynic, analyst, comedian. 
 And to name one other little print, but not to exhaust 
 the list, there is a graceful embodiment of wayward 
 fancy to accompany the Pompe Nutre - Dame. It is 
 called the Petite Pompe — represents the Pompe in small ; 
 gives us verses regi'etting half playfully, half affec- 
 tionately, the removal of so familiar a landmark, and 
 surrounds all with a flowing border of rare elegance 
 and simple invention. 
 
 But a few other brilliant and poetical records of 
 Paris lie, it has been said already, outside the published 
 Set, claim a place almost with the greater illustrations 
 I have spoken of earlier, and must surely be sought. 
 The TourellCy dite " de Marat " is one of these, and it is 
 Meryon''s record of the place where Charlotte Corday 
 did the deed by which we remember her. Except for 
 the interest of observing a change, due, I may suppose, 
 to the dulled imagination of a fairly shrewd tradesman 
 — a change by which all symbolism and significance 
 passed out of this wonderful little print — it is useless 
 to have this little etching in any State after the First 
 published one. For, after the First j)ublished one, the 
 picture and the poem became merely a view : there is 
 nothing to connect the place with Marat's tragedy,
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 and Meryon has been permitted to represent, not 
 the Tourelle, dite "de Marat," but "No. 22, Street 
 of the School of Medicine."' And the First State is 
 already rare. There were very few impressions of it. 
 It was too imaginative for the public. But here is 
 an instance in which Trial Proofs, generally to be 
 avoided, may fairly be sought for, along with the First 
 State. Distributed among different collectors is a 
 little succession of Trial Proofs with different dates of 
 May and June written by Meryon in pencil on the 
 margin. The first and second belong to Mr. Mac- 
 george ; the third was Seymour Haden's ; the fourth 
 belongs to iVIr. James Knowles ; the eighth — which is the 
 last — belongs to me (I got it, if I recollect, for £8, 10s. 
 and a commission, at the W^asset Sale). Even at the 
 beginning of this little seijuence of proofs the work 
 is not ineffective ; and at the end it is complete. 
 
 Also outside the published Set of " Paris "" are two 
 little etchings which are particularly noteworthy, and 
 which, by reason of the extreme, even astounding, deli- 
 cacy of some of their work, it is, I think, well to secure 
 in the early state of Trial IVoof — when one can get the 
 chance. These are the Pont-mi-Chnuge vers 1784 — 
 which no one can possibly confuse with the larger PoiU- 
 uu-Chnriffc — and Ia' Pont Ni'uf ct hi Samaritahic. Un- 
 like most of Mcryoirs ]*arisian work, both are, not 
 indeed transcripts from, hut idealisations of, drawings 
 by another. 'I'he first dry draughtsman, in the present 
 case, was one Nicolle. As far as the practical presenbi- 
 
 tion of all the subject is concerned, the Trial Proofs of 
 
 79
 
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 these prints, which have been sold under the hammer 
 for about .^10 each, are all that can be wanted, and 
 they possess, moreover, an exquisite refinement of 
 li^ht, of which the jiublished, and especially the later 
 published, examples give no hint. All impressions of 
 these two little plates arc worthy of respect, for these 
 plates were never worketl down to the wrecks and 
 skeletons of some of the others ; but, nevertheless, it is 
 only in the earliest impressions that we can fully see 
 the lovely lines and light and shade of the background 
 in the P out- au- Change vers 1784 — it must be had 
 " before the great dark rope " — and the sunlit house- 
 fronts (Van der Heyden-like, almost) of the Pont Netif 
 et la Saniar'italne. 
 
 Of the Bourges etchings, which are good, though 
 none are of the first importance — and they are but few 
 in all — the best is the Hue des Toiles. It is a varied 
 picture, admirably finished. The rest are engaging 
 sketches. 
 
 Amongst the remaining etchings by which Meryon 
 
 commends himself to those who study and reflect upon 
 
 his work, it is enough, perhaps, here, to speak of three. 
 
 Oceanic: Peche aux Palmes is almost the only quite 
 
 satisfactory record of that acquaintance that he made 
 
 with the antipodes. The Second State — with the title — 
 
 is not scarce at all, and can never be costly. You may 
 
 pay, perhaps, one or two pounds for it, and for the first, 
 
 say, four or five. The Entree dii Convent des Capucins 
 
 Fran^ais a Athbies — a print devoted in reality to the 
 
 Choragic Monument of Lysicrates — is the single and the 
 
 80
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 very noble plate which a visit to Athens, when he was 
 a sailor, inspired Meryon to produce. This rare plate 
 was done for a book that is itself now rare — Count Leon 
 de Labordes "Athenes au XV°^^ XVI™^ et XVII™^ 
 Siecles." Even in the Second State the Entree du Con- 
 vent has fetched about =£^12, in more sales than one. 
 RochaiLTS Address Card, albeit not particularly rare, 
 is curious and worth study. It was executed for the 
 only dealer who substantially encouraged Meryon ; and 
 Meryon contrived to press into his little plate much 
 of what he had already found and shown to be sugges- 
 tive in the features of Paris. Symbolical figures of the 
 Seine and Marne recline at the top of the design. 
 Then there are introduced bits from the Arms of Paris, 
 from the Baiii Frold Chewier (the statue of Henri 
 Quatre), from Le Pont Neiif, and from La Petite Pompe. 
 No one, of course, can ask us to consider Rochouxs 
 Address Card very beautiful or grandly imaginative; 
 but it is ingenious, and, like La Petite Pompe, though 
 in more limited measure, it is good as a piece of deco- 
 rative design. 
 
 The impressions of Meryon's etchings are printed 
 on papers of very different sorts. A gi'eenish paper 
 Meryon himself liked, and it is one of the favourites 
 of collectoi-s. Its unearthly hue adds to the wcird- 
 ness of several of the pictures, often most suitiibly ; 
 but it is not always good. Meryon knew this, and 
 many of his plates — amongst them, as I have said 
 already, that unsurpassable masterpiece, the Ahside — 
 
 were never printed on it. I have a Hue dcs Mauvals 
 
 81 V
 
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 Gar^07hi — the thint!^ was liaudelaire's favourite — upon 
 very blueish ^ray. A thiu old Dutch paper, wiry and 
 strong, white originally and softened by age, gives 
 some of the finest impressions. Other good examples 
 are on Japanese, anil there are fine ones on thinnest 
 India ])aper that is of excellent quality. Modern 
 Whatman and modem French paper have been used 
 for many plates ; and a few impressions, which, I think, 
 were rarely, if ever, printed by any one but Meryon 
 himself, are found on a paper of dull walnut colour. 
 If I seem to dwell on this too much, let it be remem- 
 bered that very different effects are produced by the 
 different papers and the different inks. The luxurious 
 collector, possessing more than one impression, likes 
 to look first at his " Black Morg^ie^'' and then at his 
 " Brown." The two make different pictures. 
 
 About the Meryon collections, it may be said that 
 M. Niel, an early friend, possessed the first important 
 gi'oup that was sold under the hammer. Then followed 
 M. Burty's, M. Hirsch's, and afterwards M. Sensier''s. 
 These fetched but modest prices — prices insignificant 
 sometimes — for Meryon's vogue was not yet. Later, 
 the possessions of M. Wasset — an aged bachelor, eager 
 and trembling, whom I shall always i-emember as the 
 "Cousin Pons" of certain 6Hc-a-6rac-crowded upper 
 chambers in the Rue Jacob — were sold for more sub- 
 stantial sums. Since then, the collection of that most 
 sympathetic amateur, the Rev. J. J. Heywood — one of 
 the first men in London to buy the master"'s prints — 
 
 has passed into the hands of Mr. B. B. Macgeorge of 
 
 82
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 Glasgow, M'hose cabinet, enriched from other sources, 
 is now certainly the greatest. The Meryons that 
 belonged to Sir Seymour Haden went, some years 
 since, to America, where whoever possesses them must 
 recognise collectors that are his equals, in Mr. Samuel 
 Avery and Mr. Howard Mansfield. If too many care- 
 fully gathered gi-oups of Meryon's etchings have left 
 our shores, others remain — though very few. The 
 British Museum Print-Room is rich in the works of 
 the master : many of the best impressions of his prints, 
 there, having belonged long ago to Philippe Burty, 
 who early recognised something at least of their merit, 
 and made, in the Gazette des Beaux Arts of that day, 
 the first rough catalogue of them. 
 
 It is time we turned for a few minutes to Felix 
 Bracquemond — a dozen years Mcryon^s junior, for he 
 was born in 1833. Among the sub-headings to this 
 present chapter there occurs the phrase, " Bracque- 
 mond's few noble things." Why " few " ? — it may be 
 asked — when, in the Catalogue of the Burlington Club 
 P^xhibition of the French Revival of Etching, it is 
 mentioned that the number of his plates extends to 
 about seven hundred, and that the list would have 
 been longer liad not Bracquemond, in his later years, 
 accepted an official post which left him little time for 
 this department of work ? Well, there arc two or 
 three reasons why, with all respect to an indefatigable 
 artist, I still say "few.'" To begin with, no incon- 
 siderable proportion of Felix Bracquemond's etched 
 
 plates are works of reproduction — translations (like 
 
 83
 
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 Raj oil's, \\''altiier.s, Unger''s, some indeed of Jacque- 
 marfs) of the coiiccjitioiis of another. These may be 
 admirable in their own way — the Erasmus, after the 
 Holbein, in the I^onvre, is more than admirable : it 
 is masterly — a monument of austere, firmly-directed 
 labour, recording worthily Holbein's own searching 
 tlraughtsmanship and profound and final vision of 
 human character. But we have agreed, throughout 
 the gi'eater part of this book, and more especially in 
 those sections of it which are devoted to the art whose 
 gi'eatest charm is often in its spontaneity, to consider 
 original work and work inspired or dictated by others as 
 on a different level. Then again, in such of Bracque- 
 mond's prints as are original, there is perhaps even less 
 than is usual, in a fine artist's work, of uniformity 
 of excellence. No very gieat number of all the plates 
 M. Beraldi industriously chronicles need the collector 
 busy himself with trying to accjuire. The largish 
 etchings of gi-eat birds, alive or dead, are amongst the 
 most characteristic. With singular freedom and rich- 
 ness — an enjoyment of their plumage and their life, 
 and a gi'eat pictorial sense to boot — has Bracquemond 
 rendered them. If I could possess but a single Bracque- 
 mond — I have none, as a matter of fact — I would have 
 such an impression of Le Haut (Tun Battant de Porte, 
 with the birds hanging there, as Mr. Alfred Morrison 
 lent to the Burlington Club. The plate was wrought 
 in 1865. But Mar got la Critique and Vanneaux et 
 Sarcellcs — prints of, I think, about the same period 
 
 — likewise represent the artist well ; and there is a 
 
 84
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 plate done only about nine years ago, at the instance 
 of the Messrs. Dowdeswell, which is certainly a triumph 
 at once of technique and of character. This is I^e 
 Vieujc Cog. 
 
 Daubigny, ]Maxime Lalanne, Meissonier, Corot, are 
 all amongst French artists who have etched, and have 
 etched more or less ably. The two last-mentioned — 
 doubtless the most important artists in their own cus- 
 tomary mediums — wrought the fewest plates. Corot's 
 are highly characteristic sketches. Daubigny worked 
 more systematically at etching, and you feel in all his 
 works a sympathetic, picturesque vision of Nature ; but 
 his prints never reach exquisiteness. Lalanne, who 
 was extremely prolific with the needle, had an unfailing 
 elegance as well as facility. And, as a little practical 
 treatise that he wrote upon the subject shows, he was 
 devoted to the craft. He was best in his smaller 
 plates : never, I think, having beaten his dainty plate 
 of the Swiss Fribourg, which was given in " Etching 
 and PHchers." Seen in large numbers, his prints reveal, 
 if not exactly mannerism, at least the (juickly reached 
 limits of his personality. In the portfolios of the 
 collector, a few prints — which will never cost many 
 shillings — are enough to represent him. But I have 
 no wish whatever to underrate Lalanne, in saying this. 
 I^alanne was not a great artist ; but he was an agi'ee- 
 able, well-bred obsei'\'er, and a gi-aceful draughtsman. 
 
 A genius, wholly individual of course, or he would 
 
 not be a genius at all — and yet in a sense the founder of 
 
 a school or centre of a gi'oup of workmen — now occupies 
 
 85
 
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 us. We })Jiss to Jules Jacqueniart, who, born in 1837, 
 died prenijituiely in 1880; a child of his century, worn 
 out by catj;er restlessness of spirit, by the temperament, 
 by the nervous system, that made possible to him the 
 excjuisiteness of his work. The son of a collector, a 
 great authority on porcelain, Albert Jacquemart, Jules 
 Jacquemart's natural sensitiveness to beauty, which he 
 had inherited, was, from the first, highly cultivated. 
 From the first, he breathed the air of Art. Short as 
 his life was, he was happy in the fact that adequate 
 fortune gave him the liberty, in health, of choosing 
 his work, and, in sickness, of taking his rest. With 
 extremely rare exceptions, he did the things that he 
 was fitted to do, and did them perfectly ; and, being 
 ill when he had done them, he betook himself to the 
 exquisite South, where colour is, and light — the things 
 we long for most, when we are most tired in cities — and 
 so there came to him, towards the end, a new surprise 
 of pleasure in so beautiful a world. He was happy in 
 being surrounded, all his life long, by passionate affec- 
 tion in the circle of his home. Nor was he perhaps 
 unhappy altogether, dying in middle age. For what 
 might the Future have held for him ? — a genius who 
 was ripe so soon. The years of deterioration and of 
 decay, in which first an artist does but dully repro- 
 duce the spontaneous work of his youth, and then is 
 sterile altogether — the years in which he is no longer 
 the fashion at all, but only the landmark or the finger- 
 post of a fashion that is past — the years when a name 
 
 once familiar and honoured is uttered at rare intervals 
 
 86
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 and in tones of apology, as the name of one whose 
 
 performance has never quite equalled the promise he 
 
 had aforetime given — these years never came to Jules 
 
 Jacquemart. He was spared these years. 
 
 But few people care, or are likely to care very much, 
 
 for the things which chiefly interested him, and which 
 
 he reproduced in his art; and even the care for these 
 
 things, where it does exist, unfortunately by no means 
 
 implies the power to appreciate the art by which they 
 
 are retained and diffused. " Still-life " — the portrayal 
 
 of objects natural or artificial, for the objects"' sake, and 
 
 not as backgi'ound or accessory — has never been rated 
 
 very highly or very widely loved. The })ul)lic generally 
 
 has been indifferent to these things, and often the 
 
 public has been right in its indifference, for often these 
 
 things are done in a poor spirit, a spirit of servile 
 
 imitation or servile flattery, with which Ai-t has little 
 
 to do. But there are exceptions, and there is a better 
 
 way of looking at these things. Chardin was one of 
 
 these exceptions — in Painting, he was the greatest 
 
 of these. Jacquemart, in his art of Etching, was 
 
 an exception not less brilliant and peculiar. He and 
 
 Chardin have done something to endow the beholders 
 
 of their work with a new sense — with the capacity for 
 
 new experiences of enjoyment — they have portrayed, 
 
 not so much matter, as the very soul of matter; they 
 
 have put it in its finest light, and it has got new 
 
 dignity. Chardin did this with his peaches and his 
 
 pears, his big coai'se bottles, his coj^per sauce-pans, 
 
 and his silk-lined caskets. Jaccjuemart did it with the 
 
 87
 
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 finer work of artistic men in household matter and 
 ornament : with his blue and white porcelain, with his 
 polished steel of chased armour and sword-blade, with 
 his Renaissance mirrors, and his precious vessels of 
 crystal, jasper, and jade. But when he was most fully 
 himself, his work most characteristic and individual, 
 he shut himself off' from popularity. Even untrained 
 observers could accept this agile engi'aver as the in- 
 terpreter of other men's pictures — of Meissonier"'s inven- 
 tions, or Van der Meer's, Greuze's, or Fragonard's — but 
 they could not accept him as the interpreter, at first 
 hand, of treasui-es peculiarly his own. They were not 
 alive to the wonders that have been done in the world 
 by the hands of artistic men. How could they be 
 alive to the wonders of this their reproduction — their 
 translation, rather, and a very free and personal one — 
 into the subtle lines, the graduated darks, the soft or 
 sparkling lights of the artist in Etching .? 
 
 A short period of practice in draughtsmanship, and 
 only a small experience of the particular business of 
 etching, made Jaccjuemart a master. As time pro- 
 ceeded, he of course developed ; found new methods, 
 ways not previously knowTi to him. But little of what 
 is obviously tentative and innnature is to be noticed 
 even in his earliest work. He springs into his art an 
 artist fully armed — like Rembrandt with the wonder- 
 ful portrait of his mother " lightly etched." In 1860, 
 when he is but twenty-three, he is at work upon the 
 illustrations to his father's " Histoire de la Porcelaine," 
 
 and though, in that jjublication, the absolute realisation 
 
 88
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 of wonderful matter — or, more particularly, the breadth 
 in treating it — is not so noteworthy as in the later 
 " Gemmes et Joyaux de la Couronne,'' there is most 
 evident already the hand of the delicate artist and the 
 eye that can appreciate and render almost unconsidered 
 beauties. 
 
 The " Histoire de la Porcelaine "" contains twenty- 
 six plates, of which a large proportion are devoted to 
 "the Oriental china possessed in mass by the elder 
 Jaccjuemart, when as yet there was no rage for it. 
 Many of Albert Jacquemart's pieces figure in the book : 
 they were pieces the son had lived with and knew 
 familiarly. Their charm, their delicacy, he perfectly 
 represented — nay, exalted — })assing without sense of 
 difficulty from the bizarre ornamentation of the East 
 to the ordered forms and satisfying symmetry which 
 the high taste of the Renaissance gave to its products. 
 Thus, in the " Histoire de la Porcelaine " — amongst 
 the quaintly naturalistic decorations from China and 
 amongst the ornaments of S&vres, with their boudoir 
 graces and airs of pretty luxury fit for the Manjuise of 
 Louis Quinze and the sleek young Abbe, her pet and 
 her counsellor, we find, rendered with an appreciation 
 as just, a Brocra lUdiennc, the Rrocca of the Medicis 
 of the Sixteenth Century, slight and tall, where the 
 lightest of Renaissance forms the thin and reed-like 
 arabcsquf — no mass or splash of coloui" — is patterned 
 over the smoothish surface with measurcn;! exactitude and 
 rhythmic comj)leteness. How much is here suggested, 
 
 and how little done ! The actual touches are almost as 
 
 S9
 
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 few as those which J;ic({ueuiart employed afterwards in 
 reiideriiijt; some fairy effects of rock-crystal — the material 
 which he has interpreted, it may be, best of all. On 
 such work may be bestowed, amongst much other 
 praise, that particular praise which seems the highest 
 to fashionable French Criticism — delighted especially 
 with feats of adroitness : occupied with the evidence of 
 the artists dexterity — " // ny a rien, et il y a touty 
 
 The " Histoire de la Porcelaine " — of which the 
 separate plates were begun, as I have said before, in 
 1860, and which was published by Techener in 1862 — 
 was followed in 1864 by the "Gemmes et Joyaux de 
 Couronne." The Chalcographie of the Louvre — which 
 concerns itself with the issue of State-commissioned 
 prints — undertook the first publication of the " Gemmes 
 et Joyaux." In this series there are sixty subjects, or, 
 at least, sixty plates, for sometimes Jacquemart, seated 
 by his Louvre window (which is reflected over and over 
 again at every angle, in the lustre of the objects he was 
 drawing), would etch in one plate the portraits of two 
 treasures, glad to give " value " to the virtues of the 
 one by juxtaposition with the virtues of the other; 
 opposing, say, the transparent brilliance of the globe 
 of rock-crvstal to the texture and hues, sombre and 
 velvety, of the vase of ancient sardonyx, as one puts 
 a cluster of diamonds round a fine cat\s-eye, or a black 
 j)earl, glowing soberly. 
 
 Of all these plates M. Louise Gonse has given an 
 
 accurate account, in enough detail for the purposes of 
 
 most people, in the "Gazette des Beaux Arts'" for 
 
 90
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 1876. The Catalogue of Jacquemart"'s etchings — which 
 are about four hundred in all — thei'e contained, was a 
 work of industry and of very genuine interest on M. 
 Gonse's part, but its necessary extent, due to the artist's 
 own prodigious diligence in work, cannot for ever 
 sufficiently excuse an occasional incompleteness of de- 
 scription making absolute identification sometimes a 
 difficult matter. The critical appreciation was warm 
 'and intelligent, and the student of Jules Jacquemart 
 must always be indebted to Gonse. But for the quite 
 adequate description of work like Jacquemart's — the 
 very subject of it, quite as much as the treatment — 
 there was needed not only the French tongue (the 
 tongue, par c\vcelh"nce, of Criticism), but a Gautier to 
 use it. 
 
 Ever)i:hing that Jacquemart could do in the render- 
 ing of beautiful matter, and of its artistic and appro- 
 priate ornament, is represented in one or other of the 
 varied subjects of the " Gemmes et Joyaux," save only 
 his work with delicate china. And the large plates of 
 this series evince his strength, and hardly ever betray his 
 weakness. He was not, perhaps, a thoroughly trained 
 Academical draughtsman ; a large and detailed treat- 
 ment of the nude figure — any further treatment of it 
 than that recjuired for the beautiful suggestion of it as 
 it occurs on Renaissance mirror-frames or in Renaissance 
 porcelains — miglit have found him deficient. He had 
 an admirable feeling for the unbroken flow of its line, 
 for its suj)plcness, for the figure's harmonious move- 
 ment. He was not the master of its most intricate 
 
 91
 
 FINK PRINTS 
 
 anatomy ; hni, on the scale on which he had to treat 
 it, liis su<;gestion was faultless. By the brief shorthand 
 of his art in this matter, we are brought back to the 
 old formula of praise. Here, indeed, if anywhere, " II 
 711/ a riaiy et il y a touty 
 
 As nothing in Jacquemarfs etchings is more adroit 
 than his treatment of the figure, so nothing is more 
 delightful and, as it were, unexpected. He feels the 
 intricate unity of its curve and flow — how it gives value 
 by its happy undulations of line to the fixed, invariable 
 oniament of Renaissance decoration — an ornament as 
 orderly as well-observed verse, with its settled form, 
 its repetition, its refrain, I will name one or two 
 notable instances. One occurs in the etching of a 
 Renaissance mirror (the print a most desirable little 
 possession) — Miroir Fran^-als clu Seizieme Sicclc, elabo- 
 rately carved, but its chief grace after all is in its fine 
 proportions — not so nuich the perfection of the ornament 
 as the perfect disposition of it. The absolutely satis- 
 factory filling of a given space with the enrichments of 
 design, the occupation of the space without the crowding 
 of it — for that is what is meant by the perfect disposi- 
 tion of ornament — has always been the problem for the 
 decorative artist. Recent fashion has insisted, suffi- 
 ciently, that it has been best solved by the Japanese ; 
 and indeed the Japanese have solved it, often with 
 great economy of means, suggesting, rather than achiev- 
 ing, the occupation of the space they have worked 
 upon. But the best Renaissance Design has solved the 
 
 problem as well, in fashions less arbitrary, with rhythm 
 
 92
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 more pronounced and yet more subtle, with a precision 
 
 more exquisite, with a complete comprehension of the 
 
 value of quietude, of the importance of rest. If it 
 
 requires — as Francis Turner Palgrave said, admirably 
 
 — "an Athenian tribunar' to understand Ingres and 
 
 Flaxman, it needs at all events high education in the 
 
 beauty of line to understand the art of Renaissance 
 
 Ornament. Such art Jacquemart understood absolutely, 
 
 and, against its purposed rigidity, its free play of the 
 
 nude figure is indicated with touches dainty, faultless, 
 
 and few. Thus it is, I say, in the Miroir Frnn^ais du 
 
 Seizieme Sieck. And to the attraction of the figure 
 
 has been added almost the attraction of landscape 
 
 and of landscape atmosphere in the plate No. 27 of 
 
 the " Gemmes et Joyaux" which represents scenes from 
 
 Ovid as a craftsman of the Renaissance has portrayed 
 
 them on the delicate liquid surface of cristal tie rocJw. 
 
 And not confining our examination wholly to " Gemmes 
 
 et Joyaux," of which, obviously, the mirror just spoken 
 
 of cannot form a part — we observ^e there, or elsewhere 
 
 in Jacquemarfs prints, how his treatment of the figure 
 
 takes constant note of the material in which the first 
 
 artist, his original, worked. Is it raised porcelain, for 
 
 instance, or soft ivory, or smooth, cool bronze with its 
 
 less close and subtle following of the figure's curves, its 
 
 certain measure of angularity in limb and trunk, its 
 
 many facets, with a somewhat marked transition from 
 
 one to the other (instcjid of the unbroken harmony of 
 
 the real figure), its occiisional flatnesses ? If it is this, 
 
 this is what Jaccjuemart gives us in his etchings — not 
 
 93
 
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 tlie figure only, but the figure as it conies to us through 
 the medium of bronze. See, for example, the Venus 
 Marine^ outstretched, with slender legs — a bronze, long 
 the possession of M. Thiers, I believe. One really 
 caimot insist too much on Jacquemarfs mastery over 
 his material — chlsonnc, with its rich, low tones, its 
 patterning outlined by its metal ribs; the coarseness 
 of rough wood, as in the Saliere de Troyes ; the sharp, 
 steel weapons and the infinite delicacy of their lines, 
 as in Epees^ Langues de Boevf', Poignards ; the signefs 
 flatness and delicate smoothness — "c''est le sinet du 
 Hoy Sant Louis " — and the red porphyry, flaked, as it 
 were, and speckled, of an ancient vase ; and the clear, 
 soft, unctuous green of jade. 
 
 And as the material is marvellously varied, so are its 
 combinations curious and wayward. I saw, one autumn, 
 at Lyons, their sombre little church of Ainay, a Chris- 
 tian edifice built of no Gothic stones, but placed, 
 already ages ago, on the site of a Roman Temple — the 
 Temple used, its dark columns cut across, its black 
 stones re-arranged, and so the Church completed — 
 Antiquity pressed into the service of the Middle Age. 
 Jacquemart, dealing with the precious objects that he 
 had to portray, came often on such strange meetings : 
 an antique vase of sardonyx, say, infinitely precious, 
 mounted and altered in the Twelfth Centiu-y, for the 
 service of the Mass, and so, beset with gold and jewels, 
 offered by its possessor to the Abbey of Saint Denis. 
 
 It was not a literal translation, it must be said again, 
 
 that Jacquemart made of these things. These things 
 
 94
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 sat to him for their portraits ; he posed them ; he 
 composed them aright. Placed by him in their best 
 lights, they revealed their finest qualities. Some people 
 bore hardlv on him for the colour, warmth, and life he 
 introduced into his etchings. They wanted a colder, a 
 more impersonal, a more precise recoi'd, Jacquemart 
 never sacrificed precision when precision was of the 
 essence of the business, but he did not — scarcely even 
 In his earlier plates of the " Porcelaine "" — care for it 
 for its own sake. And the thing that his first critics 
 blamed him for doing — the composition of a subject, 
 the rejection of this, the choice of that, the bestowal 
 of fire and life upon matter dead to the common eye — 
 is a thing which artists in all arts have always done, 
 and for this most simple reason, that the doing of it 
 is Art. 
 
 As an interpreter of other men's pictures, it fell to the 
 lot of Jacquemart to engrave the most various masters. 
 But with so very personal an artist as he, the interpre- 
 tation of so many men, and in so many years, from 
 1860 or thereabouts, onwards, could not possibly be of 
 equal value. As far as Dutch Painting is concerned, he 
 is strongest when he interprets, as in one now cele- 
 brated etching. Van der Meer of Delft. Dcr Soldat 
 und d(LS hufu'iide Mddchcn was, when Jactjuemart 
 etched it, one of the most noteworthy pieces in the 
 cabinet of M. Leopold l)ou])]e. It was brought after- 
 wards to London by the charming friend of many 
 artists and collectors — the late Samuel .Joseph — in the 
 
 hands of whose family it of coui*se rests. The big and 
 
 95
 
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 blustering ti()oj)er coiuinon in Dutch art, sits here, 
 engaging the attention of that thin-faced and eveillee 
 maiden pecuHar to Van der Meer. Behind the two, 
 who are contentedly occupied in gazing and talk, is 
 the bare, sunlit wall, spread only with its map or chart, 
 and, by the side of the couple, throwing its brilliant 
 but modulated light upon the woman's face and on the 
 background, is the intricately patterned window, the 
 airy lattice. Hai'ely was a master's subject, or his 
 method, better interj)reted than in this print. The 
 print possesses, along with all its subtlety, a quality 
 of boldness demanded specially by Van der Meer, and 
 lacking to prints which in their imperturbable delibera- 
 tion and cold skill render well enough some others of 
 the Dutch masters — I mean the Eighteenth Century 
 line ensrravinors of J. G. Wille after Metsu and the rest. 
 
 Frans Hals, once or twice, is as chai-acteristically 
 rendered. But with these exceptions it is Jacquemart's 
 own fellow-countrymen whom he translates the best. 
 The suppleness of his talent — the happy speed of it, 
 not its patient elaboration — is shown by his renderings 
 of Greuze : the Ilcve cT Amour, a single head, and 
 VOragc, a memorandum of a young and frightened 
 mother, kneeling by her child, exposed to the storm. 
 Greuze, with his cajoling art — which, if one likes, one 
 must like without respecting it — is entirely there. So, 
 too, Fragonard — the ardent and voluptuous soul of 
 him — in Le Prem'ur Baiscr. 
 
 Jacquemart, it may be interesting to add, etched 
 
 some compositions of flowers. Gonse has praised 
 
 96
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 them. To me, elegant as they are, fragile of sub- 
 stance, dainty of an-angement, they seem enormously 
 inferior to that last century flower-piece of Jan Van 
 Huysum's — or rather to that reproduction of it 
 which we are fortunate enough to know through the 
 mezzotint of Earlom. And Jacquemart painted in 
 water-colour — made very clever sketches : his strange 
 dexterity of handling, at the service of fact ; not at 
 'the service of imagination. In leaving him, it is well 
 to recollect that he recorded Nature, and did not 
 exalt or intei*pret it. He interpreted Art. He was 
 alive, more than any one has been alive before, to all 
 the wonders that have been wrought in the \sorld by 
 the hands of artistic men. 
 
 I have not said a word about the prices of the 
 Jacquemart etchings. It is still customary to buy a 
 complete series — one particular work. The " Porce- 
 laine" set costs a very few pounds: the " Gemnies et 
 Joyaux," something more — and Techener's re-issue, it 
 is worth observing, is better printed than the first 
 edition. Separate impressions of the plates, in proof 
 or rare states, sell at sums varying from five shillings 
 or half-a-sovereign — when st^rcely anybody happens 
 to be at Sotheby's who understands them — up, I 
 suppose, to two or three })oun{is, I do not think 
 the acquisition of these admirable })ieces is ever likely 
 to be held responsible for a c()llector''s ruin. 
 
 In the IntrodiK'loi'V cliuplur, a woid of leference 
 
 to two other Frenchmen — Legros and Paul Ilelleu 
 
 — points to the imj)ortance which, in contemj)orary 
 
 97 c
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 original Etching, I assign to these artists. As Legi'os 
 has Hvcd nearly all his working life in England, he 
 is treated, in subsecjuent l)ages, with English fellow- 
 workers. Even Paul Helleu I treated with I'iUglish- 
 nien, in my book called " Etching in l^ngland,"' 
 because he also has done some part — though a small 
 part — of his work here, and has been one of the 
 mainstays of our Society of Painter - Etchers. But 
 in the present volume — for the purposes of the Col- 
 lector — Helleu must be placed with his compatriots. 
 The character of his genius too — his alertness and 
 sensitiveness to the charm of grace rather than of 
 formal beauty, the charm of quick and pretty move- 
 ment x-ather than of abiding line — is French, essen- 
 tially. He is of the succession of Watteau. His 
 dry-points, of many of the best of which there are 
 but a handful of impressions (purchasable, when occa- 
 sion offers, at three or four guineas apiece), are 
 artist's snaj)- shots, which arrest the figure suddenly 
 in some delightful turn, the face in some delightful 
 expression. Am I to mention but two examples of 
 Paul Hel leu's work — that I may guide the novice a 
 little to what to see and seek for in these elegant, 
 veracious records — I will name then Femme a la 
 Ta.^si\ with its happy and audacious ingenuity in 
 point of view, and that incomparable Ehide de Jeune 
 Fille, the girl with the hair massed high above her 
 forehead, thick above her ears, a very cascade at 
 her shoulders, her lips a little parted, and her lifted 
 
 anms close against her chin. 
 
 98
 
 FRENCH REVIVAL OF ETCHING 
 
 A Belgian draughtsman — established in Paris, and 
 now approaching old age — has seen of late his repu- 
 tation extending, not only amongst collectors of the 
 cleverly odious ; and he has shown imagination, 
 draughtsmanship, a nimble hand, a certain mastery 
 of process. But in a volume from which I must ex- 
 clude so much of even wholly creditable Art — a volume 
 in which the subject of Woodcuts, which of old was 
 wont to interest, is deliberately ignored — I adopt no 
 attitude of apology for refusing serious analysis to the 
 too often morbid talent of Felicien Rops. A portfolio 
 containing the delightful inventions of Helleu, and the 
 gi-eat things of Meryon, could have no place for the 
 record of Rops"" disordered dream. Were I to be occu- 
 pied with any living Belgian, it would be with one 
 whose work M. Hymans, the Keeper of the Prints at 
 Brussels, showed me at the Bibliotheque Royale, this 
 autumn — ^f. de Witte. 
 
 91)
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Revival in England — WkisUer and Haden, Clas- 
 sics — Haden' s Jirst works — The "Agamemnon" — 
 Drij - points — Etchings on Zinc — Prices — Whistler s 
 French Set — His Thames Series — The Leijlaiul 
 period — The Venetian work — His rarest Dry- 
 points — Whistlers Prices at the Heywood Sale, 
 the Hutchinson Sale, and now. 
 
 In England, the Revival of Etching, so far as one can 
 
 fix its origin at all, seems due, in chief, to the great 
 
 practical work of two etchers of individual vision and 
 
 exceptional power — Whistler and Seymour Haden. 
 
 Much writing on the subject — and some of it, I hope, 
 
 not bad — has also scarcely been without its effect. It 
 
 has at least roused and sustained some interest in 
 
 Etching, amongst the public that reads. It cannot, 
 
 fairly, ever have been expected to produce gi-eat artists. 
 
 Whistler and Haden are, it is now allowed, amongst 
 
 the Classics already. Each has a place that will not be 
 
 disturbed. Each is an honoured veteran. The work of 
 
 Seymour Haden has been closed long ago. It is years 
 
 since he gave his etching-needle to Mr. Keppel of New 
 
 York ; saying, with significant gesture, " I shall etch 
 
 no more." From the other delightful veteran no such 
 
 100
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 formal declaration has — so far as I understand — as yet 
 proceeded. Mr. Whistler may even now surprise us by 
 a return fi-om Lithography. His lithogi-aphs, which 
 will be considered more or less in the final chapter of 
 this book, are indeed admirable and engaging. But 
 it is by his etchings that iVIr. Whistler's fame will 
 live. And though he began to etch two score of years 
 ago, one would be sorry even now to feel it was quite 
 certain that the last of his etchings had been done. 
 
 We will speak of Seymour Haden first. He is the 
 older of the two, and his practical work is admittedly 
 over. His etching, though conceived always on fine 
 lines, has somehow always been much more intelligible 
 to the large public than Whistler''s. For yeai*s, in 
 England and America, he has enjoyed something as 
 near to popular success as sterling work can ever get ; 
 and in days when I was able to pick up for six shillings, 
 in Sotheby's auction-rooms, the dry-point of Whistler's 
 Fanny Leyland — which would now be considered ridicu- 
 lously cheap at just as many guineas — Seymour Haden's 
 River in Ireland was selling (when it appeared and 
 could ])e bought at all) at (juite substantial prices. 
 His published series of Etchings, with the text by Mon- 
 sieur ]Jurty, and then the eulogies of Mr. Humerton, 
 hatl (lone something, and justifiably, towards what is 
 called "success" — the success of recognition, I mean, 
 as distinguished from the success of achievement, which 
 was certainly his besides. And then — in the nick of time 
 — there had come the Agamemnon^ almost the largest 
 
 fine etching one can call to niind ; for, in Ktching, 
 
 101
 
 FLNK riUNTS 
 
 " important size " often means vulgarity. The Agamem- 
 non had an immense sale. It was seen about so much, 
 in the rooms of people who aspired to Taste, that it 
 became what foolish men call "vulgarised." As if 
 the multiplication of excellent work — its presence in 
 many places, instead of only a few — was positively a 
 nuisance and a disadvantage ! Anyhow, Seymour 
 Haden hat! already entered into fame. 
 
 In 1880, the late Sir William Drake — an intimate 
 friend who had collected Hatlen and admired him — 
 issued, through the Macmillans, a descriptive Catalogue 
 of Haden's etched work. The Catalogue takes note 
 of a hundred and eighty-five pieces. Scarcely any- 
 thing, I think, is omitted. Of the substantial work 
 none bears an earlier date than 1858 ; but fifteen years 
 before that — when he was a very young man, journey- 
 ing — Haden h<ul scratched on half-a-dozen little coppei-s 
 sparse notes of places of interest he had seen in Italy ; 
 and very long ago now (when Sir Seymour was living 
 in Hertford Street) he showed me, I remember, the 
 almost uni(|ue impressions from these practically un- 
 known little plates. They were impressions upon which 
 a touch or so with the brush had — if I remember 
 rightly — a little fortified the dreamy and delicate 
 sketch which the copper had received. There is neither 
 nee<l nor disposition to insist too much on the existence 
 of these plates, or rather upon the fact that once they 
 were wrought. They scarcely claim to have merit. 
 IJut the fact that they were wrought shows one thing 
 
 a coilectoi- may like to know — it shows that Seymour 
 
 102
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 Haden"'s interest in Etching- began before the days of 
 that French Revival in m hich was executed luidoiibtedly 
 the bulk of his work. 
 
 These little prints, then, as far as they went, were in 
 quite the right spirit. They were jottings, impressions 
 — had nothing of labour in them. But in the interval 
 that divides them from the im})ortant and substantive 
 work of 1858, 1859, 1860, and later years, the artist 
 must have studied closely, though he was in full prac- 
 tice, most of that time, as a surgeon. In the interval, 
 he had lived, so to put it, with Rembrandt ; he had 
 become familiar with Claude. And though they 
 influenced, they did not overpower him. By 1864, 
 there wei-e fifty or sixty prints for M. Burty to chronicle 
 and eulogise, in the Gazette des Beaux Arts. The 
 greatly praised She7X' Mill Pond had been done in 
 1860. Mijttoii Hall — which, unlike Mr. Hamerton, I 
 prefer to the Sliere — had been wrought one year earlier. 
 It shows a shady avenue of yew-trees leading to an 
 old manor-house which receives the full light of the 
 sun ; and in that print, early as it may seem, there 
 was already the breadth of treatment which as years 
 proceeded l)ecame more and more a characteristic of 
 Seymour Iladen's work. In 1863 came, amongst many 
 other good things, Battersca Reach, which in the First 
 State bore on it this inscription of interest: "Old 
 Chelsea, Seymour ILulen, 186-J, out of Whistler''s 
 window." To the same year belongs the charming 
 plate. Whistler .i Jlou.se, Old C/wl.sea. 'Vha tide is out, 
 
 the mud is exposed ; on the left is Lindsay Row ; and 
 
 103
 
 FINK PRINTS 
 
 hcyoiul, unci to the ri^'lit, Chelsea Old Church and 
 liattersea Bridge : the picturesc^iie wooden pile-bridge 
 of that privileged day. It was not till 1870 that 
 there came the Agamemnon — the Brcdking-up of the 
 Agamemnon, to give it its full title — a view, in reality, 
 of the Thames at Greenwich, seen under sunset light, 
 the hull of the old ship partially swung round by the 
 tide. This very favourite print exists in a couple 
 of States. The Second, though less rare, is scarcely 
 perceptibly less fine than the First. In it a smoking 
 chinniey, a brig under sail, and two small sailing-boats 
 — all of them objects in extreme distance — have been 
 replaced by indications of the sheds of a dockyard. In 
 the Hey wood Sale, a rich impression of the Agamemnon 
 — the State not specified, but in all probability a First 
 —sold for £1, 10s. In the Sir William Drake Sale, 
 twelve years afterwards — in 1892 — a First State fetched 
 ^7, 7s. ; a Second, M, 15s. 
 
 For convenience' sake, I will name a few more 
 excellent and characteristic works — prints which 
 have Seymour Haden's most distinguishing qualities 
 of frankness, directness, and an obvious vigour. His 
 etchings are deliberately arrested at the stage of the 
 sketch ; and it is a sketch conceived nobly and executed 
 with impulse. The tendency of the work, as Time 
 went on, was, as has been said, towards greater breadth ; 
 but unless we are to compare only such a print as 
 Out of Study- Window, say (done in 1859), with only 
 the most atlmirable Rembrandt-like, Geddes-like dry- 
 print. Windmill Hill (done in 1877), there is no greatly 
 
 104
 
 A\'HISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 marked contrast ; there is no surprise ; there is but a 
 steady and not unnatural development. I put this 
 down, in part at least, to the fact that when Seymour 
 Haden first took up Etching seriously (in 1858, re- 
 member) he was already middle-aged. He had lived 
 for years in the most frequent intercourse with dignified 
 Art ; his view of Nature, and of the way of rendering 
 her — or of letting her inspire you — was large, and 
 likely to be large. Yet as Time went on there came 
 no doubt an increasing love of the sense of spacious- 
 ness and of potent effect. The work was apt to be 
 more dramatic and more moving. The hand asked 
 the opportunity for the fuller exercise of its freedom. 
 
 Saicky Abbey, etched in 1873, is an instance of this, 
 and not alone for its merits is it interesting to men- 
 tion it, but because, like a certain number of its fellows 
 amongst that later work, it is etched upon zinc — a 
 risky substance, which succeeds admirably, when it 
 succeeds, and when it fails, fails very much. Windmill 
 Hill — two subjects of that name — Nine Barroio Down, 
 Wareham Bridge, and the Little Bonthou^e, and again 
 that Grim Spain which illustrates my " Four Masters 
 of Etching " are the prints which I should most 
 choose to possess amongst those of Haden's later 
 period ; whilst — going back to the jieriod of 1864 and 
 1865 — Sun,set on the Thami'.s is at the same time a 
 favourite and strong, and Fenton Hook remarkable for 
 its draughtsmanship of tree-trunk and stumj). Yet 
 earlier — for they belong to 1860 and 1859 — there 
 
 are the Mytton Hall, wiiicli I have spoken of ah*eadv, 
 
 105
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 and the Combe Bottom. Covihc Bottom is unsurpassed 
 for sweetness and spontaneity. And Mytton Hall has 
 its full share of that priceless element of Style which 
 is never altogether absent from Sevmour Haden's work. 
 Again — and most acceptable of all to some of us — 
 The Water Meadow (which has been circulated very 
 largely) is, in a perfect impression, to be studied and 
 enjoyed as a vivacious, happy, synipatlietic transcript 
 of a sudden rain-storm in the Hampshire lowlands, 
 where po})lars flourish and grass grows rank. The 
 collector who can put these things into his folios — 
 and a little diligence in finding them out, and three 
 or four guineas for each print, will often enable him 
 to do so — will have given himself the opportunity of 
 confirmation in the belief that among modern etchers 
 of Landscape, amongst modern exponents in the art of 
 lilack and ^Vhite of an artistic sympathy with pure 
 and ordinary Nature, Seymour Haden stands easily 
 first. And to say that, is not to say that he succeeds 
 equally, or has equally tried to succeed, with por- 
 traiture or figure-studies. It is not to compare him 
 — to his advantage or disadvantage — with any other 
 artist in the matter of the etcher^s peculiar skill and 
 technical mastery. 
 
 The best collection of Seymour Haden''s work that 
 has ever l)een sold in detail was the collection of Sir 
 William Drake. In it the First State of A River in 
 Ireland — of which only twelve impressions had been 
 taken — fetched ^^49 (Dunthorne) ; and the First State 
 
 of Shere Mill Pond, X^35 ; a unique impression of 
 
 106
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 Battersea RaUzcay Bridge fetched =£'18, 10s, (Deprez) ; 
 Erith Marshes, First State, £^, 4s. ; Combe Bot- 
 tom, First State, i?3; Sunset on tlu' Thames, First 
 State, i?2, 12s. ; and SaxcJey Ahhey, First State, 
 m, 4s. 
 
 ^^'^ith the master-etchers of the world — Meryon"'s 
 equal in some respects, and, in some respects, Rem- 
 )3randt*s — there stands James ^XTiistler. Connoisseurs 
 in France and England, in America, Holland, Bavaria, 
 concede this, now. It was fiercely contested of old 
 time, and there is not much cause for wonder in 
 that, for the work of Mr. Whistler is, and has been 
 from the first almost, so desperately original that the 
 world could hardly be expecte4 to be reatly to receive it. 
 And Mr. ^^'histler never by anything approaching to 
 cheap issue facilitated familiarity with his work. In 
 1868 Mr. Hamerton wrote of him : " I have been told 
 that, if appHcation is made to ]\Ir. Whistler for a set of 
 his etchings'' — the set, it may be said in parenthesis, 
 was a very small one then — "he may perhaps, if he 
 chooses to answer the letter, do the a})plicant the 
 favour to let him have a coj)y for about the price of 
 a good horse ; but beyond such exce})tional instances 
 as this, Mr. Whistler's etchings are not in the market." 
 They have been in the market since, however — every- 
 body knows — and if in 18G8 a "set" (the Thames Set 
 or the French Set was meant, presumably) was valued 
 by Mr. Whistler at the price of a horse, of late years 
 a single print, such as the Zaandum for instance, has 
 
 been valued by Mr. Wniistlcr at the price of a Ilumber 
 
 107
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 cycle. Even in the days — some sixteen years ago, or 
 so — when the work of the deho-htful master was least 
 appreciated, there was an enormous difference in the 
 j)rice of a print obtained through what are known 
 as the "regular channels" and its price if obtained 
 in open competition, imder the hannner at Sotheby's. 
 Those gi-eat days ! — or days of great opportunities 
 — when, as I have said before, I became possessed 
 for six shillings of Fanny LeTjland, and, for hardly 
 more than six shillings, of the yet rarer dry-point, 
 Battersea Dawn. 
 
 About a dozen years ago, I, with the enthusiasm 
 of a convert, began a Catalogue of AVhistler's prints, 
 intending it for my ^wn use. I finished it for 
 my brother-collectors, and for poor Mr. Thibaudeau, 
 who refreshed me with money — and a little for Mr. 
 AVhistler, too, if he was minded to receive my offering. 
 T'Tie only previously existing Catalogue — that of Mr. 
 Ralph Thomas — had been published twelve years earlier, 
 and had meantime become of little service. There were 
 several reasons for that, but, to justify my own attempt 
 — which, as in the ciise of Meryon, has been justified 
 indeed by my brother-collectors"' reception of it — it 
 will suffice if I mention one. Mr. Thomas, working in 
 1874, catalogued about eighty etchings. I, finishing 
 my work in 1886, aitalogued two hundred and four- 
 teen. Of the additional lunnber only a few are prints 
 which had been already wrought when Mr. Thomas 
 wrote, and which had escaped his notice. By far the 
 
 gi'eater portion have been etched in more recent years. 
 
 108
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 And many of them are unkno\vn to the amateur — by 
 sense of sight at least — even to this day. 
 
 Whistler's etchings are so scattered, and so many of 
 them are, and must ever be, so very rare, that I could 
 not have done what I did if several diligent collectors, 
 well placed for the purpose, had not helped me. Mr. 
 Thibaudeau himself — the erudite dealer — amassed much 
 information, and placed it at my service. Mr. Samuel 
 Avery, when Mr. Keppel took me to see him in East 
 38th Street, in the autumn of 1885, put at my disposal 
 everything he knew ; and his collection was even then 
 the worthy rival of what Mr. Howard Mansfield's is 
 now — the rival, almost, of Seymour Haden's own col- 
 lection of A\Tiistler's, which yvent to America a few- 
 years ago : drawn thither by the instrumentality of 
 a great cheque from Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Mortimer 
 Menpes — much associated with Whistler at that time, 
 and who, I suppose, retains the fine collection of 
 Whistler's he then possessed — took much trouble with 
 me in the identification of the rare things he owned, 
 and I had to express my thanks to Mr. Harrett of 
 Brighton, to the Reverend Stoj)ford Brooke, Mr. Henrv 
 S. 'ITieobald, and some of the best-known London 
 dealers — to Mr. Brown of the Fine Art Society, and 
 .Mr. Walter Dowdeswell, an enthusiast for Whistler, who 
 furnished me with delightful notes I never published, 
 on the precise condition of the impressions in my own 
 set of the "Twenty-Six Etchings." Again, I saw — what 
 any one may see — such of the Whistler prints jus are 
 
 possessed l)y the Biitish Museum Piint-Rooiii. And, 
 
 109
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 lastly, I had access, more than once, to Mr. Whistler's 
 own collection ; but that unfortunately was very in- 
 complete. It consisted chiefly of the later etchings. 
 
 It is now about forty years since Wliistler began to 
 etch ; but his work in Etching has never been continuous 
 or regular, and though he has done a certain number 
 of things, some fine, some insignificant, since the ap- 
 pearance of my Catalogue, of late his work in Etching 
 appears to have almost ceased. Looking back along 
 his life, one may say, periods there have been when 
 he was busy with needle and copper — periods, too, 
 during which he laid them altogether aside. The first 
 chronicled, the first completed plate, was done, it 
 was believed, in 1857 — when he was a young man in 
 Paris. But he told me there existed, somewhere or 
 other, in the too safe keeping of public authorities 
 in America, a plate on which, before he left the public 
 sei-vice of the States, he neglected to fully engrave that 
 map or view for the Coast Sui-vey which the author- 
 ities exjjected of him, but did not neglect to engrave 
 upon the plate, in truant mood, certain sketches for 
 his own pleasure. The plate was confiscated. Young 
 Mr. Whistler was informed that an unwarrantable 
 thing had been done. He perfectly agreed — he told 
 the high official — with that observation. In removing 
 a plate from the hands of its author before he had com- 
 pleted his pleasure upon it, its author had been treated 
 unwaiTantably. Just as my Catalogue — a " Study and 
 a Catalogue," I call it — was going to press, there 
 
 anived from New York — sent thence to London by 
 
 110
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 the courtesy of Mr. Kennedy, its owner — an impression 
 from the copper I have just spoken of. It is a curi- 
 osity, and not a work of Ai't — a geographers view of 
 the coast. 
 
 It will be noticed from my little anecdote that, at a 
 very early period of his life, Mr. Whistler was in the 
 right, absolutely, and other people in the wi-ong — and 
 in the right he has remained ever since, and has believed 
 it, in spite of some intelligent and much unintelligent 
 criticism. He has been (let the collector be very sure 
 of this) a law unto himself — has worked in his own way, 
 at his own hours, on none but his own themes : the re- 
 sult of it, I dare to think delibei-ately, the preservation 
 of a freshness which, with artists less true to their art 
 and their own mission, is apt to suffer and to pass away. 
 And with it the charm passes. Now Whistler's newest 
 work — his work of this morning, be it etching or litho- 
 gi-aph— possesses the interest of freshness, of vivacity, 
 of a new and beautiful imj^ression of the world, con- 
 veyetl in individual ways, just as much as did his early 
 work of nearly forty years ago. When the compara- 
 tively few people whose artistic sensibilities allow them 
 to really understand the delicacy of Mr. Whistler's 
 method, shall but have known it long enough, they will 
 not Iki found, as some among the not (juite unapprecia- 
 tive are found to-day, protesting that there is a want 
 of contiiuiity between the earlier efforts and the later, 
 and that the vision of pretty and curious detail, and 
 the firnuiess and daintiness of hand in recording it, 
 
 which confessedly distinguished the etchings of France 
 
 111
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 niul of the Thames below Bridge, are missing to the 
 later plates or the plates of the middle jieriod — to the 
 drv-points of what I may term the Leyland period (when 
 he drew all three Miss I^eylands, their father and 
 their mother too, and Speke Hall, where they lived), 
 and to the more recent Venetian etchings. Peccavi! 
 I have myself, in my time, thought that this continuity 
 was wanting. I have told Mr. Whistler with exceeding 
 levity of speech, that when, in the Realms of the Blest, 
 he desired, on meeting Velascjuez and Rembrandt, not 
 to disappoint them, he must be provided, for his justi- 
 fication, with his Thames etchings in their finest states. 
 It would be a })otent introduction. But I am not 
 sure that the Venetian portfolios — the "Venice" and 
 the "Twenty-Six Etchings," which are most of them 
 Venetian in theme — would not serve Mr. Whistler in 
 good stead. For — spite of some insignificant things 
 put out not long after the appearance of my Catalogue, 
 along indeed, or almost along with some fine ones of 
 Brussels and Touraine — there is a continuity which the 
 thorough student of Mr. Whistler's work will recognise. 
 There is often in the Venetian things — as in the Door- 
 way of the " Venice," and in The Garden and The 
 Balcony of the " Twenty-Six Etchings " — an advance 
 in the impression produced, a greater variety and flexi- 
 bility of method, a more delightful and dexterous 
 effacing of the means used to bring about the effect. 
 
 The Venetian etchings — some people thought at first 
 they were not satisfactory because they did not record 
 
 that Venice which the University-Extension-educated 
 
 112
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 tourist, with his guide-book and his volumes of Ruskin, 
 goes out from England to see. But I doubt if Mr. 
 Whistler troubled himself about the guides or read the 
 sacred books of jNIr. Ruskin with becoming attention. 
 INIr. Ruskin had seen Venice nobly, Avith great imagina- 
 tion; ^Ir. Fergusson and a score of admirable archi- 
 tects had seen it learnedly ; but Mr. AMiistler would 
 ^ee it for himself — that is to say, he would see in his 
 own way the Present, and would see it quite as certainly 
 as the Past. The architecture of Venice had impressed 
 folk so deeply that it was not easy in a moment to 
 realise that here was a gi'eat draughtsman — a man 
 too of poetic vision — whose work it had not been 
 allowed to dominate. The Past and its record were 
 not WTiistler's affair in Venice. For him, the lines 
 of the steam-boat, the lines of the fishing-tackle, the 
 shatlow under the squalid archway, the wayward vine 
 of the garden, had been as fascinating, as engaging, 
 as worthy of chronicle, as the domes of St. Mark's. 
 
 Yet we had not properly understood Mr. WTiistler's 
 work in England, if we supposed it could be otherwise. 
 From associations of Literature and History this artist 
 from the first had cut himself adrift. His sul)ject was 
 what he saw, or what he decided to see, and not any- 
 thing that he had heard ul)out it. He hiul dispensed 
 from the l)eginning with those aids to the ])rovocation 
 of interest which aj)peal most strongly to the world — 
 to the {)erson of sentiment, to the literary lady, to the 
 man in the street. ^Ve were to be interested — it" we 
 
 were interested at all — in the liappv accidents of line 
 
 113 ' H
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 aiul light he had jjcrceived, in liis dexterous record, in 
 liis knowing adaptation. 
 
 I must be allowed to say, however — and it is useful 
 to the collector that I should say it plainly — that there 
 was some justification (much more than Mr. Whistler, 
 I suppose, would allow) for those of us who did not bow 
 the knee too readily before the Venetian prints. In 
 the States in which they were first exhibited, there was, 
 with all their merits, something ragged and disjointed 
 about several of them. Mr. Whistler worked more 
 upon them later, adding never of course merely finicky 
 detail, but refinement, suavity. Of these particular 
 plates, the collector should remember, it is not the 
 earlier impressions that are the ones to be desired. 
 It is, rather, the later impressions, when the plate was, 
 first, perfected — then even, if need arose through any 
 wear in tirage, suitably refreshed. 
 
 To return for a moment to Whistlerian character- 
 istics. Though the value of many of his etchings, as 
 ]Mr. AVhistler might himself tell us, consists in the 
 exquisiteness of their execution and of their aiTange- 
 ment of line, it would be unfair not to acknowledge 
 that amongst the many things it has been given to 
 !Mr. AVhistler to perceive, it has been given him to per- 
 ceive beautiful character and exquisite line in Humanity 
 — that, certainly, just as much as quaintness and charm 
 in the wharves and warehouses of the Port, in the shabby 
 elegance of the side canals of Venice, in the engaging 
 homeliness of little Chelsea shop-fronts. The almost 
 
 unknown etching of his mother — one of the most 
 
 114
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 refined performances of his career, as excjuisite, in its 
 own way, as the famous painting which is displayed at 
 the Luxembourg — proves his possession of the quahty 
 which permitted Rembrandt to draw with the reticence 
 of a convincing pathos his most impressive portraits of 
 the aged — the Lutma^ the Clement de Jonghe, the Mere 
 de Rembrandt, an voile noir. 
 
 Again, the Fanny Leyland, and The Muff\ and many 
 another print that I could name, attest IVIr Whistler^s 
 solution of a problem which presents itself engagingly, 
 attractively, to the ingenious, and uselessly to the in- 
 competent — the problem of seeing beauty in modern 
 dress, and grace in the modern figure. Whistler, no 
 more than Degas, Sargent, or J. J. Shannon, sighs for 
 the artificial dignity of the fashions of other times. 
 Even at moments when modern P^ashion is not in truth 
 at its prettiest, he is able to descry a piquancy in the 
 contemporary hat, and to find a grace in the flutter of 
 flounce and frill. What else after all should we expect 
 from an artist the sweep of whose brush would give 
 distinction to the Chelsea Workhouse, or to the St. 
 George's Union Infirmary in the Fulham Road, and for 
 whom, under the veil of night or dusk, the chimney 
 of the Swan Urcwery would wear an as))ect not less 
 beautiful than King's College Chaj)el .^ It has been 
 given to the master of Etching to see everyday things 
 with a poetic eye. 
 
 " Take care of the extremities," said old Couture, to a 
 
 painter who addressed himself to the figure : " take care 
 
 of the extremities, for all the life is there.'' IJut that, 
 
 115
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 it may truly be answered, is what Mr. Whistler has 
 often neglected to do. It may be rejoined, however, 
 that where he has neglected to doit, somehow " all the 
 life " has not gone out of his work. And the hand of 
 the man sitting in the boat, in one of the most desirable 
 of the early Thames etchings. Black Lion Wharf, and 
 (to name no other instance) the hands in the painting 
 of Sarasate of a do/en years ago, are reminders of how 
 completely it is within Mr. Whistler's power to indicate 
 the life, the temperament, by " the extremities,"'"' when 
 it suits his work that he shall do so. And the avoid- 
 ance, so often commented upon, of this detail here, 
 and of that detail there, itself reminds us of something 
 important — nay, perhaps of the central fact which 
 determines the direction of so much of this great 
 etcher's labour. It reminds us that whether Mr. 
 Whistler''s work is record of Nature or not, it has at 
 all costs to be conclusive evidence of Art. And for 
 the one as well as for the other, he has had need 
 to know, not only what to do — a difficult thing 
 enough, sometimes — but a more difficult thing yet : 
 what to avoid doing. In other words, selection plays 
 in his work a part unusually important, and he has 
 occupied himself increasingly, not with the question of 
 how to imitate and transcribe, but with the question 
 how best to imply and to suggest. In nearly all his 
 periods he is the master of an advanced art, which 
 gives a curious and a various and a continual pleasure. 
 
 And now a word or two on what is matter of busi- 
 ness to the collector — the business of the acquisition 
 
 116
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 of Whistler's etchings. Unlike the thousand prints 
 which, in these later days of "the Revival," are the 
 inadequate result of the laborious industry of popular 
 people — and which have served their purpose when, 
 framed and mounted, they have covered for a while 
 the wall-paper in every builder's terrace in Bayswater — 
 works of the individuality, the flexibility, the genius 
 in fine of Whistler, appeal to the collector of the 
 highest class and of the finest taste, and, it may be 
 even, to him alone. They lie already in the portfolio 
 by the side of Rembrandts and Meryons. It is not 
 easy to get them ; or, rather, there are some which it 
 is only difficult, and some which it is impossible, to 
 possess. Certain of the coppers are known to have 
 been destroyed ; others, which one cannot always ]iarti- 
 cularise, are in all })robability destroyed. Then again 
 there are dry-points, never very robust ; some of them 
 so delicate, so evanescent, that the plate, should it 
 exist, would prove to be worth nothing. It has yielded, 
 perhaps, half-a-dozen impressions, and they have gone 
 far towards exhausting it. Many ])lates, again, exist, 
 no doubt, in the late State, or in the undesirable 
 condition, and some are yet intact, and others, like the 
 two Venetian series — the " Venice "" and the " Twenty- 
 Six"" — economically managed from the begiiming, have 
 yielded a subsUuitiul yet never an extensive array of 
 such j)ro(jfs as satisfy the eye that is educated. 
 
 Publication — if one can (juite cull it so — of Mr. 
 Whistler's etchings first begun in 1S59, when the 
 
 artist had worked seriouslv for only two or three years. 
 
 117
 
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 Thirteen etchings, generally called "the French Set," 
 were printed then by Delatre in Paris, in very limited 
 numbers, on the thin Japan or China or on the good 
 old slightly-ribbed jiajier that the collector loves. 
 The "Thames Set'' — sixteen in number, and consisting 
 of the majority of the River pieces executed u\) to 
 that time — were the next to be offered. But they 
 appeared, publicly, only in 1871, when, as Mr. Ellis was 
 good enough to tell me, " Ellis & Green " bought the 
 })lates and had a hundred sets printed. Their printing 
 was rather dry, so that it is chiefly by the rare impres- 
 sions which either Mr. Whistler himself, or Dehttre 
 it may be, had printed, years before, that these plates 
 are to be judged. At all events it is these impressions 
 which represent them most perfectly, though I would 
 by no means speak with disrespect of the impressions 
 printed by Mr. Goulding when the Fine Art Society 
 bought the plates of Mr. Ellis, nor of the subsequent 
 ones printed (juite of late years, when Mr. Keppel, in 
 his turn, bought the coppers of the Fine Art Society. 
 
 Of the two other recognised sets — the " Venice " of 
 the Fine Art Society and the " Twenty-Six Etchings " 
 of the Dowdeswells — it must be said first that neither 
 has been subjected to the vicissitudes that attended the 
 earlier plates. The dozen prints in the " Venice " were 
 first issued by the Fine Art Society in the year 1880 ; 
 but, as I have said earlier, very few of the fine and 
 really finished impressions — of the hundred permitted 
 from each plate — date from as early as that year. 
 
 The "Twenty-Six Etchings," issued by the Messrs. 
 
 118
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 Dowdeswell, were brought out in 1886 ; Mr. ^^'histler 
 himself printing, with consummate skill, every mortal 
 copy, and making the most interesting little changes, 
 repairs, improvements, at the press-side. Of most of 
 the subjects there were but fifty impressions. 
 
 These things are wholly admirable, and mostly — 
 it is evident — are rare; but the extremest rarity is 
 -reserv^ed for a few of those many plates which do not 
 belong to any set at all, and were never formally issued. 
 Thus Paris, Isle de la Cite — etched from the Galerie 
 d'Apollon in the Louvi-e — is of unsurpassable rarity ; 
 and it is singularly interesting as having, though with 
 a date as early as 1859, very distinct characteristics of 
 a style of which the wider manifestation came much 
 later. The First State of the Rag Gatherers is of 
 gi-eat, though not of quite such extraordinary rarity. 
 The Kitchen, in the First State, is not exceptionally 
 rare. It should be had, if possible, in the Second, for, 
 many years after its first execution, Mr. Whistler took 
 it up again, and then, and then only, was it that he per- 
 fected it. In su])tlety of illumination, in that Second 
 State, it is as fine as any painting of De Hooch's. 
 WcHtminsier Bridge is very rare and very desirable in 
 the First State ; in the Second — by which time it has 
 gone into the regular "Thames Set" or "Sixteen 
 Etchings" — it has lost all ils delicacy and harmony: 
 it is hard and dry. 'J'he figure-pieces of the Leyland 
 period — drv-points, nearly always — are very rare. 
 l"liey include not oidy a little succession of ])ortraits — 
 
 the lovtlv print of Fainii) Lctj/and I have refeiTed 
 
 11!)
 
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 to already — but likewise a succession of studies of ])aid 
 or of familiar models, of which the Model Resting is 
 one of the most beautiful. There is Till'ie : a model, 
 too : likewise of great rarity and charm. Of the larger 
 etchings, three of the finest are the Putney Bridge, the 
 Battersea Bridge, and the Large " FooV Beyond this 
 scale, Etching can hardly safely go. Even this scale 
 would be a danger to some, though Mr. Wliistler 
 has managed it. But then, that art of his — like 
 Rembrandt's own — can " blow on brass " as well as 
 " breathe through silver." He " breathes through 
 silver" in the dainty rarities of a later time, the little 
 Chelsea shop subjects — Old Clothes Shop, Fruit Shop. 
 Axe there half-a-dozen impressions of them anywhere 
 in the world .'' And then, the poetic charm of Price''s 
 Caiulle Works — the easy majesty oi London Bridge! 
 
 As to the prices of Whistlers in the open market .'' 
 Well, they increase, unquestionably. Some of the very 
 greatest rarities, it may be remembered, have never 
 appeared in the auction-room. There are half-a- 
 dozen, I suppose, for any one of which, did it appear, 
 forty or fifty guineas would cheerfully be paid. The 
 average price, now, of a satisfactory Whistler — to 
 speak to the collector very roughly, and always with 
 the difficulty of striking an average at all — the average 
 dealers price might now be eight guineas. But we 
 will look at the Catalogues ; premising, as has been pre- 
 mised already, that there are some rarer things than 
 any that are there chronicled. The time when Mr. 
 
 Heywood sold his AVhistlers was the fortunate time to 
 
 120
 
 WHISTLER AND HADEN 
 
 buy. A First State of the Rag Gathereis was sold then 
 for less than two pounds ; a First of the Westminster 
 Bridge (then called " The Houses of Parliament ''), for 
 about five pounds ; and many quite desirable things 
 went for a pound a piece, and some for a few shillings. 
 In 1892, when there came the sale of Mr. Hutchinson''s 
 collection, and of Sir William Drake^s, opinion was 
 miore formed ; yet nothing like the prices that would 
 be reached to-day were attained then. In j\Ir. Hutchin- 
 son's collection, the First State of the Marchande de 
 Moutarde — rare, but not especially rare — went for 
 £4), 10s. ; the First State of the Kitchen for £8, 15s. ; 
 the Lime Burners for £6, 10s. ; a trial proof of the 
 Arthur for i?10, 15s. ; a trial proof of the Whistler for 
 riP15, 10s. Again, the I Fm?;?/ fetched £12; the First 
 State of Speke Hall, £'d, 12s. ; the Fanny Leyland, 
 £\5, 10s. ; From Pickled Herring Stairs, £Q, 6s. ; the 
 Pidaccs, £8, 15s ; the San Biagio, £7, 10s ; the Gar- 
 den, £5, 10s. ; the Wool Carders, £8 ; the Little Draw- 
 bridge, Amsterdam, £9, 15s. ; the Zaandam, £10. At 
 the Drake Sale — a smaller one, as far as Whistlers were 
 concenied — ten guineas was given for the Kitclien; £19 
 for the Foigr. It imist be added that this Forge, 
 which is in the second published set (the "Thames 
 series"''' or "Sixteen Etchings,'" call tlu'iii which you 
 will) is in the cjuality of its difrorcnt impressions more 
 unecjual than almost any print I know. It varies from 
 an ineffective ghost to a thing oC huauty. At X^19, let 
 us hope it was a thing of beauty ; but verv much oftencr 
 
 it is an ineffective ghost — desperately over-rated. 
 
 121
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Etchers since our "real Classics — William Straus: — 
 His iiidividitalitij, and obligations to Legros — That 
 excellent Master — Legros's 7iohility and dignity — His 
 observation and imagination — Holroyd — The daintiness 
 of Short — C. J. Watson — Goff, Jlexible and compre- 
 hensive — The qualities of Cameron — Oliver Hall's 
 Landscape — The question of prices — Contemporary 
 Prints generally dear. 
 
 Though no very definite commercial values may yet have 
 
 been established, in the auction-rooms, for their work, 
 
 many living English etchers of a generation later than 
 
 that of Whistler and of Seymour Haden have been for 
 
 some time now apj^ealing to the collector; and their 
 
 prints — sold chiefly perhaps at the " Painter-Etcher's," 
 
 at Mr. Dunthorne's, and at Mr. R. Gutekunst's — are 
 
 worthy to be carefully considered. The best of them, 
 
 at least, will rank some day as only second to the 
 
 classics of their art. Indeed, if the term " the Revival 
 
 of Etching"" has any meaning, it is to the best men 
 
 of the later generation that it must most apply ; for 
 
 " revival "" signifies surely some tolerably wide diffusion 
 
 of interest, and is a word that could scarcely be used if 
 
 all we were concerned with were the efforts of two or 
 
 122
 
 LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 
 
 three isolated men of genius — in France, jVIeryou, 
 Bracquemond, Jacquemart ; in England, Haden and 
 "\Miistler. 
 
 No, the collector who addresses himself to the gather- 
 ing of modern etchings, must go — or may go, fairly — 
 beyond the limits of the work of the men I have this 
 instant named. But in going beyond them, very wary 
 must be his steps. He who is already a serious student 
 of the older masters — he who by happy instinct, or by 
 that poor but necessary substitute for it, a steady ap- 
 plication to the consideration of great models — knows 
 something of the secrets of Style, and so will not fall a 
 ready prey to the attractions of the meretricious and 
 the cheap. But the beginner is in need of my warn- 
 ing ; and among the work of the younger generation, 
 the etching that is already popular and celebrated — 
 more ])articularly the etching that is obviously elabo- 
 rate and laboured — is as a rule the work he must 
 eschew. The thing of course to aim at, is to acquire 
 gradually such "eye"" and knowledge as will enable 
 him to pounce with safety here and there u})on 
 unknown work ; but at first it is well perhaps that 
 in his travels beyond the territory of the admittedly 
 great, he shall not wander too fur. I will give him 
 the names of a i'cw artists, whom the connoisseur 
 begins to appreciate, — men of whose methods it will 
 be interesting, and need not be extravagant, to possess 
 a few examples. 
 
 Of any such men, here with us in I-'ngland — save 
 
 indeed Lcgi'os, whose claims to highest place I bold to 
 
 12.'3
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 be yet more incontestable — William Strang is the one 
 
 who has been known the longest, though the number 
 
 of his yeai-s may still permit him, ere he pass from us, 
 
 to double the already formidable volume of his work. 
 
 Strang has etched in the right methods, and no one 
 
 knows much better than he does, the technique of the 
 
 craft ; and, then, moreover, though he paints from 
 
 time to time a little, it is Etching — and all of it 
 
 original Etching— that is the occupation of his life. 
 
 And within less than twenty years Mr. Strang has 
 
 wrought— well, say between two hundred and fifty and 
 
 three hundred plates. It is no good giving the precise 
 
 number, for before this book has lain for a month upon 
 
 the reader's shelf the number will have ceased to be 
 
 precise. Almost as many kinds of subjects as were 
 
 treated by Rembrandt, have been treated — and no one 
 
 of them on one or two occasions only — by Mr. William 
 
 Strang. He has dealt with religious story — caring 
 
 always, like Rembrandt, and like Von Uhde to-day, for 
 
 dramatic intensity in the representation of it, rather 
 
 than for local colour — he has dealt too with Landscape, 
 
 with Portraiture, with grim and sordid aspects of con- 
 
 temyjorary life. 
 
 The presence of imagination, the absence, almost 
 
 complete, of formal beauty, are the very " notes " of 
 
 ^Ir. Strang's work — that absence is so remarkable 
 
 where it would have been least expected, that we are, 
 
 it may be, a little too apt to forget that in certain 
 
 of his masculine portraiture it does not make itself 
 
 felt at all. He has made etchings of handsome men, 
 
 124
 
 LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 
 
 and they have remained handsome. He has even made 
 etchings of men not handsome, and handsome they 
 have become. But he knows not the pretty woman. 
 And his landscape is endowed but scantily with the 
 beauty it cannot entirely miss. Another curious thino- 
 about Mr. Strang's landscape is, that more even than 
 that of Legi'os, his first great master, it seems derived 
 from but a little personal observation and an immense 
 study of the elder art. Indeed, I am not quite sure 
 whether, save in the accessories of his figures — such as 
 the potato-basket of one of his woebegone, limping, 
 elderly wayfarers — Mr. Strang has ever drawn and 
 observed anything which had not already fallen within 
 the observation of the gi-eat original engravers of the 
 remoter Past. In his dramatic pieces he shows a sense 
 of simple pathos, as well as of the uncanny and the 
 weird. In Portraiture ]\Ir. Strang can be effectively 
 austere and suitably restrained. Occasional failures, 
 or comparative failures, such as the portraits of Mr. 
 Thomas Hardy and of the late Sir William Drake, do 
 perhaps but bring into stronger relief the successes of 
 the Mr. Sichel and of Ian Strang, and many others 
 besides. I nmst refrain from naming them. When 
 Mr. Strang has done so much, and nearly all of it on 
 a high technical level, it is natural to feel that though 
 out of them all the general collector of etchings might 
 rea.sonably be satisfied with the possession of a dozen — 
 or, peratl venture, six — he would like at least to choose 
 them for himself. Indeed, there is no "Jjest" to guide 
 him to — no "worst"' to guaid him against. 
 
 vzry
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 Legros has been named as Strang's first master. He 
 belongs to an older generation, and if I name him here, 
 between his best-known pupil and some of the younger 
 men, it is not to minimise his importance, but in part 
 as a convenient thing, and in part because, with his 
 long years of English practice, one hesitates to allow 
 even French birth and a French fii'st education to cause 
 one to place Legros outside the English School that he 
 has influenced. Born at Dijon nearly sixty years ago, 
 Legros has been amongst us since 1863. But it is not 
 English life — or indeed any life — that has made him 
 what he is. He might have done his work — most of it 
 at least but the portraiture — while scarcely wandering 
 beyond the bounds of a Hammersmith garden. He has 
 been fed on the Renaissance, and fed on Rembrandt ; 
 but yet the originality of his mind pierces through the 
 form it has pleased him to impose on its expression. 
 He gives to masculine character nobility and dignity ; 
 or rather, he is impressed immensely by the presence of 
 these things in his subjects. His etching of Mr. G. F. 
 Watts is perhaps — taking into account both theme and 
 treatment — the finest etched portrait that has been 
 wrought by any one since the very masterpieces of 
 Rembrandt, nor, honestly speaking, do I know that 
 it fails to stand comparison even with these. 
 
 Like his most prolific and perhaps also his most 
 
 original pujiil, who has been spoken of already, Legros 
 
 has little sense of womanly beauty ; but the lines of his 
 
 landscape — often, as I judge, either an imagined world 
 
 or but a faded memory of our own — have refinement 
 
 126
 
 LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 
 
 and charm. His art is restful — restful even when it is 
 weird. A large proportion of his earlier work records 
 the life of the priesthood. In its visible dignity — as I 
 have said elsewhere — its true but limited camaraderie^ 
 in its monotony and quietude, in its magnificence of 
 service and symbol, the life of the priest, and of those 
 who serve in a great church, has impressed Legros pro- 
 ,-foundly ; and he has etched these men — one now read- 
 ing a lesson, one waiting now with folded hands, one 
 meditating, one observant, one offering up the Host, 
 another, a musician, bending over the Velio or the 
 double-bass with slow movement of the hand that 
 holds the bow. Dignity and ignorance, pomp and 
 power, weariness, senility, decay — none of these things 
 escape the observation of the first great etcher of the 
 life of the Church. Communion dans VEglise St. Mklard 
 and Chantres Espag-noh, when seen in fine " states," are 
 amazing and admirable technical triumphs, as well as 
 penetrating studies, the one of religious fervour, the 
 other of im])ending death. In La Mort ct le Bucheroti 
 — in either vei-sion of the plate, for there are two — 
 the imagination of I^egi'os is at its tenderest. Is not 
 Ulnccndic dramatic, in its large and abstract way ? 
 Is not La Mort da Vagabond — with the storm like 
 the storm in " Lear" — the one vcrij large etching that 
 is not, in its scale, a mistake .'' I know I would not 
 have it othenvise, though it wants almost a jiortfolio 
 to itself, or, better, a frame upon the wall. One might 
 go on indefinitely; l)ut again it is j)referable to send 
 
 the remler to the study of the master's long and serious 
 
 127
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 work — a huiulrecl and sixty-eight pieces there were in 
 1877, when Thibaudeau & Malassis published their Cata- 
 logue ; ten years later there were ninety additions to the 
 list ; and to this day Mr. Legros has not ceased to etch. 
 Onlv the very first of his prints show any evidence 
 of technical incompleteness. The very latest — though 
 no doubt, by this time, his own real message must have 
 been delivered — the very latest show no symptom of 
 fatigue or of decay. 
 
 Not more than once or twice, I think, in all his long- 
 career, has Legros published his works in sets, either 
 naturally connected or artificially brought together. 
 Charles Holroyd, a distinguished pupil of Legros's, has 
 twice already published sets — there is his " Icarus " 
 set, and a little earlier in date, yet in no respect imma- 
 ture, his " ]\Ionte Oliveto "" set. Holroyd — with indi- 
 viduality of his own, without a doubt — is yet Legros's 
 true spiritual child. He has much of his refinement, 
 of his dignity. Did he love the priesthood from 
 Leffros"'s etchine-s, before ever he lived with them in 
 Italy .'* Rome itself, I suppose, gave him the love of 
 what is visibly Classic — and that is a love which Legros 
 does not appear to share. His composition is generally 
 admirable; his sense of beautiful "line"''' most note- 
 worthy. His trees — stone pine and olive, or the 
 hund)ler trees of our North — are thus not only indi- 
 vidual studies, true to Nature sometimes in detail, 
 always in essentials — but likewise restful and impres- 
 sive decorations of the space of paper it is his business 
 
 to fill. Farm behind Scarborough shows him homely, 
 
 128
 
 LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 
 
 simple, and direct. Was it a Roman garden, or 
 Studley, that suggested The Koiuul Temple ? In the 
 little plate of the Borghese Gardens — my own private 
 plate, which I bought from him when the first impres- 
 sion of it hung at the Painter-Etchers' five or six years 
 ago — Holroyd consciously abandons much that is wont 
 to attract (atmospheric effect, for example), but he re- 
 'tains the thing for which the plate existed — dignified 
 and expressive rhythm of " line." That justifies it, and 
 permits it to omit much, and to only exquisitely hint 
 at the thing it would not actually convey. 
 
 We will turn for a few minutes to another contem- 
 porary who has etched in the right spirit — Mr. Frank 
 Short. Some people think that Mr. Short has not 
 quite fulfilled the promise which only a few years ago 
 he gave, as an original etcher. For myself, I consider 
 that the fulfilment is, at most, only delayed : not 
 rendered unlikely. Mr. Short has been for several 
 years extremely busy in the translation, chiefly into 
 mezzotint, of pictures and drawings by artists as various 
 as Turner, Nasmyth, Constable, Dewint, and G. F. 
 Watt.s. If engi'avings that are not original inventions 
 are ever worth buying — and that, of course, cannot be 
 doubted — these translations by Mr. Short are worth 
 buying, eminently. There is not one of them that fails. 
 His flexibility is extraordinary. His productions are 
 exquisite. In a parenthesis, let me advise their j)ar- 
 chase, when things of the sort are recpiired. But Short 
 is before us just now only in the caj)acity of an original 
 
 etcher, and, as an original etcher, with well-nigh per- 
 
 li21) I
 
 FINE PllINTS 
 
 feet command of technique^ he registers the daintiest of 
 individual impressions of the world. That his field 
 as an observer at first hand is limited, is certainly 
 true. Coast subjects please him best. We have no 
 finer draughtsman of low-lying land, of a scene with a 
 low horizon, of a great expanse of mud and harbour 
 deserted by the tide — all their simplicity, even uncome- 
 liness of theme, made almost poetic. Low Tide and 
 the Evening Star ; Evening, Bo.sham ; Sleeping till the 
 Flood, are all, among subjects of this order, prints that 
 should be secured where it is possible — and where the 
 accumulation of modern etchings is not an incon- 
 venience. In Stourbridge Canal and in Wrought NaiU 
 — both of them finely felt, finely drawn bits of the 
 ragged, sordid " Black Country "" — we have desirable 
 instances of Mr. Short's dealings with another class 
 of theme. If you want him in a more playful mood, 
 take Quarter Boys — a quite imaginative yet gamesome 
 vision of urchins looking out to sea from the Belfry of 
 the church of Ilye. 
 
 C. J. Watson has for many years now been etching 
 persistently, and been etching well. But he has not 
 got, and could not perhaps quite easily get, beyond 
 the learned simplicity of Mill Bridge, Bosham, done in 
 1888. It is a sketch with singular unity of impression 
 — or rather with that unity of impression which is not 
 so singular perhaps when the work remains a sketch. 
 St. Etienne-du-Mont — a theme from which one would 
 have thought that Mr. Watson would have been warned 
 
 off, remembering how, once and for ever, it had been 
 
 130
 
 LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 
 
 dealt with by the genius of Meryon — is, doubtless, an 
 accurate enough portrait, but the individuality — where ? 
 And without individuality, such work is an architec- 
 tural drawing. This St. Etknne bears date 1890; but 
 since 1890 Mr. Watson has done finer things — his 
 strong and capable hand stirred to expression by a 
 nature not perhaps very sensitive to every effect of 
 beauty, but feeling the interest of solid workmanship 
 and something of the charm of the picturesque. Ponte 
 did Cavallo has daintiness, and some yet more recent 
 work in Central Italy and Sicily — with architecture 
 generally as the basis of its interest — may fall reason- 
 ably enough within the province of collectors who can 
 afford to accumulate — who can afford to add well to 
 well and vineyard to vineyard. 
 
 Of the remaining English etchers of our time. Colonel 
 Goff', Mr. D. Y. Cameron, and Mr. Oliver Hall are 
 those whom it will be best to notice. Mr. Macbeth, 
 Mr. Herkomer, Mr. Pennell, Mr. W. H. May, Mr. 
 Mempes, Mr. Raven Hill, Mr. Haig, Miss Bolingbroke, 
 Mrs. Stanhope Forbes — others besides — have brought 
 out i)rints of which the possession is pleasant ; but it 
 is, I suppose, the three men whom I named earlier who 
 by reason of combined (juality and (juantity of " out- 
 put"" most deserve the collector"'s serious consideration. 
 
 Of these three, Goff — a retired Guardsman, but no 
 
 more really an amateur than Seymour Haden — is, I 
 
 take it, the best known. Actual popularity he has 
 
 been, for an etcher, wonderfully near lo atbiining. 
 
 He may even now attain it. Much of the excellence 
 
 131
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 of his work is easily intelligible ; his point of view, 
 though always artistic, is one that can be reached, 
 often, by the ordinary spectator of his prints. Hence, 
 his relatively large accejitance — an agi'eeable circum- 
 stance which I should be glad to consider was owing 
 exclusively to the skill that is certainly likewise his. 
 Colonel Goffs sympathies are broad ; his subjects 
 admirably varied ; and the vivacity of his artistic 
 temperament allows him to attack each new plate 
 with new interest. He is almost without mannerism 
 in treatment, and of that which })resents itself to his 
 gaze on his journey through the world, there is singu- 
 larly little which he is not able artistically to tackle. 
 Not (juite the architectural di-aughtsman that C. J. 
 Watson is, he yet can indicate tastefully the architec- 
 ture of church or cottage or city house. His sym- 
 pathies are with the new as much as with the old, 
 and that is in part because to him a building is not 
 only, or chiefly, a monument with historical associa- 
 tions; it is, above all, an excuse and a justification 
 for an arrangement on the copper, of harmonious and 
 intricate line. Very successfully he has dealt with 
 landscape. Is it the seaboard or the town that he 
 depicts, he can people the place with figures vivacious 
 and rightly displayed. I suppose that he has executed 
 by this time scarcely less than a hundred plates. 
 Summer Storm in the Itchen Valley remains the most 
 popular, and would therefore prove, in an auction-room, 
 the least inexpensive. But, among the pure etchings. 
 
 Pine Trees, Christ Church, and Norfolk Bridge, Shore- 
 Am
 
 LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 
 
 ham^ and the extremely delicate little print of the Chain 
 Pier, Brighton^ and Low Tide, Mouth of'tlie Hampshire 
 Avon — with its own dreary but impressive beauty — are 
 to my mind distinctly more desirable, and should be 
 possessed if possible ; whilst among the dry-points (and 
 a dry-point can never be common) I would place highest, 
 perhaps, the peaceful little Itchcn Abbas Bridge. 
 
 Intricate in arrangement of line, the work of Colonel 
 Goff is in actual workmanship less elaborate than that 
 of Mr. D. Y. Cameron, who, though now and again, 
 as in that which remains almost his masterpiece — 
 Border Towers — a pure sketcher in Etching, much 
 oftener devotes himself to work solid, substantial, 
 deliberate rather in fulness of realisation than in eco- 
 nomy of means. He is a fine engi'aver on the copper; 
 addicted to massive airangements of shadow and light 
 — giving to these, wherever there is any fair excuse for 
 doing so, a little of the Celtic weirdness Mr. Strang 
 bestows upon the figure. Glamour, just a touch of 
 wi/ardy, is in the Pahue, Stirling CaMle ; und not in 
 that only. A master, already, of the arrangement of 
 light and shade — a master, already, of technique — 
 Mr. Cameron (who has studied Rembrandt so much, 
 and, I should j)resume, Mcryon) is finding his own path. 
 Indeed, the Border Towers shows that all that he has 
 learnt from Rembrandt he h;is made his own by this 
 time. How else could he have acc()mj)lishe(] what is 
 certainly one of the most comj)lete and significant 
 suggestions of" Landscaj)e wronghl in owv day! A 
 
 Rembrandt Farm is earlier. It is extremely clever, 
 
 L'ifJ
 
 FINE PllLNTS 
 
 but, as its very name might lead one to conjecture, it 
 is more distinctly imitative. Mr. Cameron was not a 
 master at the moment when he wrought the Flower 
 Market^ because if he did not make in that the iiTeme- 
 diable mistake of choosing the wrong medium — printer's 
 ink where one"'s cry, first and last, is naturally for 
 "colour"" — he made at all events the mistake that 
 Mr. Whistler is incapable of making (as his etching 
 of The Garden shows), the mistake of working with a 
 heavy hand, when what was wanted was a treatment of 
 " touch and go," as it were — the very lightest coquetry 
 of line. Occasionally Mr. Cameron has failed ; occa- 
 sionally his industry has resulted in the commonplace ; 
 but he is a young man still ; the collector must take 
 account of him ; his may hereafter be a very dis- 
 tinguished name ; and meanwhile — now even — the col- 
 lector of good Modern Etching is bound to put into his 
 folios a few of Mr. Cameron's always sterling prints. 
 
 Mr. Oliver Hall — a young man also, and one who 
 paints in water-colour as well as etches — can hardly 
 have done as many plates as Mr. Cameron, yet; and 
 in none of them, free sketches of landscape — breezy, im- 
 mediate, well-disposed — has Mr. Hall been so unwise 
 as to emulate the almost Meryon-Iike elaboration not 
 inappropriate to at all events the architectural subjects 
 of Cameron. Oliver Hall's is delightful and mascu- 
 line work. After a very short period of immaturity, 
 during Avhich the influence of Seymour Haden was 
 that which he most disclosed, his Trees on the Hillside 
 
 and A Windy Day testified to an extraordinary flexi- 
 
 134
 
 LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 
 
 bility and force. The lines of " foliage," as people call 
 it — it is the tree, however, rather than the leaf — the 
 lines of the tree-form, however intricate, did not elude 
 his point. Afterwards, Angerton Moss : Windy Day, 
 and the Edge of the Forest, with its gust-blown trees 
 and threatening sky, and later still. King's Lynn J'rom 
 a Distance, came to assure us that here was an artist 
 getting at the heart of Nature — a master who could 
 bring before us a broad poetic vision of natural effects. 
 
 Mr. Alfred East, Mr. Mempes, Mr. Jacomb Hood, 
 Mr. Percy Thomas, Mr. J. P. Heseltine, Mr. W. H. 
 May, Sir Charles Robinson, Elizabeth Armstrong (Mrs. 
 Stanhope Forbes), and Minna Bolingbroke (Mrs. C. J. 
 Watson) ought not to go unmentioned even in a book 
 which has a wider field than " Etching; in Eny-land "" — in 
 which some of them are named less baldly. 
 
 The inexpert purchaser may like to know what is the 
 
 sort of price asked generally by its producer, or by 
 
 the dealer, or the Painter-Etchers'' Society — to which 
 
 the print may be intrusted — for a new etching. I am 
 
 here on ticklish ground ; but I nmst make bold to 
 
 answer, speaking broatlly, " Far too much." Later on — 
 
 before I have (juite done with the subject of the Litho- 
 
 graj)h — I shall return to the charge, on this matter of 
 
 solid cash. liut each class of work stands, in the matter 
 
 of price, on its own j)eculiar footing; and here we talk, 
 
 not of litliograplis, but of etchings and dry-points. 
 
 'I'lic wholly exceptional genius, approved by Time, 
 
 and happily yet with iis to hfuelit by the result 
 
 of his fame, may be j)ai-(loncd for asking twelve 
 
 135
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 guineas for one of his most recent etchings. If he 
 gets it, his rewards are delightfully contrasted with 
 those of Meryon — who w as grateful when an old 
 gentleman in the French War Office gave him a franc 
 and a half for an impression of the Ahside de Notre 
 Dame, which, hecause of its beauty and of its peculiar 
 and rare " state," is worth to-day about a hundred and 
 fifty pounds. But we are not all men of exceptional 
 genius ; and, in the case of etched work, which, without 
 deterioration, may be issued to the number of fifty or 
 a hundred or a couple of hundred impressions, is it 
 wise to seek to anticipate what after all may prove not 
 to be the verdict of the world? — is it wise to limit the 
 issue so very artificially by the simple, I will not say 
 the gi'eedy process of asking two, three, and four 
 guineas for an impression of a good but ordinary etch- 
 ing ? A good etching, produced by a contemporary 
 artist, could, (pite to the benefit of the etcher, be sold 
 for a guinea. If the etcher has not time to print it 
 himself, or is not, at heart, artist enough to wish to do 
 so, let him send it to a good printer, with definite in- 
 structions how to print it, and, on the average, each 
 impression may cost him half-a-crown. Then, of course, 
 if he sells it through a dealer, there will be something 
 for the dealer — perhaps five shillings. Say about four- 
 teen shillings will be left for the artist. The fee is 
 insignificant — but, if you once interest the public, it 
 may ])e almost indefinitely multiplied. The price that 
 is prohibitive to the ordinary man of taste — the price 
 
 that prevents him, not, of course, from buying an 
 
 136
 
 LATER ENGLISH ETCHERS 
 
 etching here and there, but from forming any con- 
 siderable collection of etchings — that, if the artist only 
 knew it, is the gi-eatest possible disadvantage to him- 
 self. He is concerned for his dignity; his amour-propre^ 
 he sometimes says. But an etching — like a book — is 
 a printed thing; and the author of a book conceives, 
 and rightly, that his amour-propre is wounded rather 
 by absence or nan'ow restriction of sale than by the 
 moderation — the lo^v^less, if you will — of the price at 
 which his book is issued. 
 
 Now a drj'-point and an ordinary etching stand on 
 different gi-ound in this respect. Both are printed 
 things, indeed ; but whilst the etching will, according 
 to its degree of force or delicacy, yield, without " steel- 
 ing,"" from fifty to four hundred impressions — and 
 generally c^uite as near the four hundred as the fifty — 
 a dry-point will inevitably deteriorate after a dozen 
 or twenty impressions, and may even deteriorate after 
 three or four. Each impression, then, of a dry-point 
 that is desirable at all, has its own peculiar value — its 
 rarity to begin with (unless you work it to death), and 
 its unlikeness to its neighbour. I blame no good artist, 
 when he has made a good dry-point, for asking two or 
 three or four, or .six or seven, guineas for it. I do not 
 as work of art — as ])roviding me with joy — esteem it 
 any more highly than the etching. The etching, which 
 I ought to ac(juire at a guinea, may give me the gi'atifi- 
 cation of a ^V^)r(lswol•thian poem. It may bo — happy 
 chance for every one concemed if it is! — as directly 
 
 inspired as the Ancient Mitr'uur : it may be a thing 
 
 137
 
 FINE PRIiNTS 
 
 conceived and wrought in one of those "states of the 
 atmosphere " which (it is Coleridge himself who says it) 
 are "addressed to the soul." Do I underrate it? Not 
 a jot. But I discern that, like the Ancient Mariner, 
 it can be multiplied in large numbers. The dry-point 
 cannot. 
 
 Even at the risk of beinsr charged with a certain 
 repetition of my argument, I shall return — as the 
 reader has been warned already — it will be somewhere 
 in the chapter on modern Lithography — to this ques- 
 tion of the too extravagant price, and therefore of 
 the necessarily too restricted sale, of the contemporary 
 print. 
 
 138
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Recent Interest in Martin Schongauer — A graceful 
 Primitive — Diirer the exponent of the fuller Renais- 
 sance — Some principal Diirers — Their prices at the 
 Fisher Sale— Gennan "Little Masters"— The Orna- 
 ment of Aldegrever — The range of the Behams — 
 Altdorfer — Other Little Masters — And Lucas Van 
 Leijden. 
 
 Among the least reprehensible, and also among the 
 least widely diffused, of the recent fads of the collector, 
 there is to be reckoned a certain increase in the con- 
 sideration accorded to the work of Martin Schongauer. 
 If Martin Schongauer s ingenious and engaging plates 
 — naive in conception, and, in execution, dainty — came 
 ever to be actually preferred to the innumerable ])ieces 
 which attest the potency and the variety of Dl'irer, that 
 preference might possibly be explained, but could never 
 be justified. As it is, however, no reasonable admirer 
 of "the great Albert" can begrudge to one who was 
 after all to some extent bis predecessor, and not in all 
 things his inferior, the honoin-able place which, after 
 many generations ol' coinparative neglect, that prede- 
 cessor has lately taken, and now seems likely to bold. 
 Schongauer, even more it may be than Albert Durer 
 himself, was, as it were, a j)atb-breaker. The interest 
 
 of the Primitive belongs to him ; anil the interest of 
 
 139
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 the simple. Some of his reli<;ious conceptions wei'e 
 expressed in prettier form — and form on that account 
 more readily welcomed — than any that was taken on 
 by the conceptions of the giant mind that even now 
 draws us upon our pilgrimage to Nuremberg, as Goethe 
 draws us to Weimar. The Virgin of Schongauer is 
 more acceptable to the senses than the average Virgin 
 of Dlirer, whose children, on the other hand (see 
 especially the delightful little print, The Three Genii^ 
 Bartsch 66), have the larger lines and lustier life of the 
 full Renaissance, A touch of what appeals to us as a 
 younger naivete, and a touch of what appeals to us as 
 elegance, are especially discernible in the earlier artist's 
 work ; and that work too, or nuich of it, has often the 
 additional attractiveness of exceptional scarcity. Like- 
 wise, it is to most of us less familiar. But when all 
 these elements of attraction have been allowed for, 
 the genius of Albert Dlirer — so much deeper and so 
 much broader, at once more philosophical and more 
 dramatic, and expressed by a craftsmanship so much 
 more changeful and more masterly — the genius of 
 Albert Dlirer dominates. If our allegiance has wavered, 
 if we have been led astray for a period, by Martin Schon- 
 gauer himself, it may be, or by somebody less worthily 
 illustrious, we shall return, wearily wise, to the author 
 of the Melancliolia and the Nativity, of the Knight of 
 Death and of llie Virgin hy tJic City Wall. To study 
 long and closely the work of the original engi'avers, is 
 to come, sooner or later, cjuite certainly to the conclu- 
 sion that there are two artists standing above all the 
 
 140
 
 DURER: THE "LITTLE MASTERS" 
 
 rest, and that it was theirs, })i-e-eminently, to express, 
 in the greatest manner, the greatest mind. One of 
 these two artists, of course, is Rembrandt. And the 
 other is Dlirer. 
 
 Adam Bartsch, working at Vienna, in the beginning 
 of this centmy, upon those monumental books of refer- 
 ence which, as authorities upon their wide subject, are 
 even now only partially displaced, catalogued about a 
 hundred and eight metal plates as Albert Durer''s con- 
 tribution to the sum of original engraving. The Rev. 
 C. H. Middleton-Wake, working in 1893 — and profit- 
 ing by the investigations, all of them more or less 
 recent, of Passavant and G. W. Reid, of Thausing, 
 Durers biogi-apher, and Mr. Koehler, the Keeper of 
 the Prints at Boston, Massachusetts — has catalogued 
 one hundred and three. The number — not so con- 
 siderable as Schongauer's, by about a couple of score — 
 does not, at first thought, seem enormous for one the 
 greater portion of whose life was given to original 
 engi-aving ; but then, it must be remembered, Dl'irer's 
 life, though not exactly a short, was scarcely a long 
 one. And, again, whatever may have been the pro- 
 cesses he enn)loyecl, and even if, as Mr. Middleton- 
 Wake sup])oses, etched work, as well as l)urin-work, 
 helped him greatly along his way, the elaboration of 
 his labour was never lessened ; the order of complete- 
 ness he strove for and attained had nothing in conimon 
 with the coiii{)Ieteness of the sketch. His German 
 pertinjicity and dogged joy in work for mere work's 
 
 sake, never j)ermitted him to dismiss an endeavour 
 
 141
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 until lie had carried it to actual realisation. Each 
 piece of his is not so much a page as a volume. The 
 creations of his art have the lastingness and the finality 
 of a consinmnate I>iterature, and of those three mate- 
 rial thintrs with which such Literature has been 
 compared — 
 
 " marbre, onyx, email," — 
 
 as the })hrase goes, of one who wrought on phrases as 
 Cellini on the golden vase, and Diirer on the little 
 sheet of burnished copper. 
 
 Of the hundred and three prints which, in the Fitz- 
 William Museum, Mr. Middleton-Wake placed in what 
 he believes to be their chronological order — many, of 
 course, their author himself dated, but many afford room 
 for the exercise of critical ingenuity and care — sixteen 
 belong to the series known as "The Passion upon 
 Copper," which is distinguished by that title from the 
 series of seven-and-thirty woodcuts known generally as 
 " The Little Passion." The " Passion upon Copper," 
 executed between the year 1507 and the year 1513, are 
 j)ronounced "unequal in their execution," "not compar- 
 ing favourably with Durer"'s finer prints," and " engraved 
 for purj:)oses of sale." Now most of Diirer's work was 
 " engraved for purposes of sale " — that is, it was meant 
 to be sold — but what the critic may be supposed to 
 mean, in this case, is, that the designs were due to no 
 inspiration ; the execution, to no keen desire. Four 
 much later pieces — including two St. Christophers — 
 
 are spoken of with similar disparagement. I am 
 
 142
 
 DURER: THE "LITTLE MASTERS" 
 
 unable to perceive the justice of the reproach when it 
 is apphed to the Virgin xvith tlie Child in SxcaddUng 
 Clothes — a print of which it is remarked that it, Hke 
 certain others, is "without any particular charm or 
 dignity ; being taken quite casually from burgher-life, 
 and only remarkable for the soft tone of the engraving." 
 No doubt the Virgin zc'ith the Child in Sicaddling Clothes 
 'is inspired by the human life — and that was " burgher- 
 life " necessarily — which Diirer beheld ; and it is none 
 the worse for that. It is not one of the very finest of 
 the Virgins, but it is simple, natural, healthy, and it is 
 characteristic, as I seem to see, not only in its technique, 
 but in its conception. What more fascinating than the 
 little bit of background, lavished there, so small and yet 
 so telling ? — a little stretch of shore, with a town placed 
 on it, and gi-eat calm water : a reminiscence, it may be, 
 of Italy — a decor from Venice — a bit of distance too 
 recalling the distance in the Melancholia itself. But we 
 must pass on, to consider briefly two or three points in 
 Diirer's work : points which we shall the better illus- 
 trate by reference to the gi'eater masterpieces. 
 
 The year 1497 was reachetl before the master of 
 Nuremberg affixed a date to any one of his plates. 
 'Hiat is the not (juite satisfiictory com})()sition, curiously 
 ugly in the particular realism it affects — and yet, in a 
 measure, interesting — A Group of Four Naiad Women. 
 'J^ausing doul)ts, or does more than doubt, the origi- 
 nality of the design. Mr. MiddlctoM-Wake holds that 
 in execution, at least, it shows distinct mlvance upon 
 
 l^iirer's earlier work, and amongst earlier work he in- 
 
 143
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 dudes no less than three-and-twenty of the undated 
 plates : putting the Ravislier first, with 1494 as its 
 probable year, and putting last before the Group of 
 Naked Wornen, a piece which he maintains to be the 
 finest of the earlier prints, the Virg^'m and Child with 
 the Moiikqj. 
 
 Looking along the whole line of Diirer prints, in what 
 he deems to be their proper sequence, Mr. Middleton- 
 Wake observes, as all observe indeed, wonderful varia- 
 tions — differences in execution so marked that at first 
 one might hesitate to assign to the same master, pieces 
 wrought so differently. He argues fully how their dis- 
 similarity is due "either to a marked progression in 
 their handling " or to an alteration in their actual 
 method. For quick perception of such partly volun- 
 tary change, the student is refeiTed to an examination 
 of the Coat of Ariivi with the Skidl, the Coat of' Arms 
 with the Cock, the Adam and Eve, the St. Jerome, and 
 the Melancholia. The year 1503 was probably the date 
 of the two Coats of Arms ; the great print of the Adam 
 and Eve can*ies its date of " 1504 '^ ; the St. Jerome is 
 of 1512 ; the Melanclwlia of 1514. The practical point 
 established for the collector by such differences as are 
 here visible, and which a study of these particular ex- 
 amples by no means exhausts, is that he must most 
 carefully avoid the not unnatural error of judging an 
 impression of a Dl'irer print by its attainment or its 
 non-attainment of the standard established by some 
 other Dijrer print he knows familiarly already. The 
 
 aims technically were so very different, he nmst know 
 
 144
 
 DlTRER: THE "LITTLE MASTERS" 
 
 each print to say with any certainty — save in a few 
 most obvious cases — whether a given impression, that 
 seems good, is, or is not, desirable. The " silver-grey 
 tone,"" for example, so charming in one print, may be 
 unattainable in, or unsuitable to, another. 
 
 L'pon the question of the meaning of certain prints 
 of Dlirer, anv amount of ingenious, interesting conjee- 
 lure has been expended in the Past. One of Mr. 
 Stopford Brooke's sermons — I heard it preached, now 
 many years ago, in York Street — is a delightful 
 essav on the Melancholia. For suggestions as to 
 the allegorical meaning of The Knight of' Death, it 
 may be enough to refer the reader to Thausing (vol. ii. 
 page 225) and to Mrs. Heaton's Life of Dlirer (page 
 168). The Jealousy, Dlirer speaks of, in his Nether- 
 lands Diary, as a *' Hercules." The Knight and the 
 Lady, Thausing says, is one of those Dance of Death 
 pictures so common in the Middle Age. Of the Great 
 Fortune, Thausing holds that its enigmatical design, 
 with the landscape below, has direct reference to the 
 Swiss War of 14-99, and this we may agree with ; but, 
 explaining, it may be, too far, he writes in detail, 
 "The winged Goddess of Justice and Retribution 
 stands, smiling, on a globe ; carrying in one hand a 
 bridle and a curb for the too prcsinnjjtuous fortunate 
 ones; in the other, a goblel lor uiiappreciatetl worth." 
 Mr. Middleton-Wake, wisely less ])hil()s()pliical, urges a 
 8im})Ier meaning. The city of Ninvmberg, he reminds 
 us, had, in compliance with Maximilian's demand, lin- 
 
 nished four hundred foot soldiers and sixty horse, for 
 
 1 1.3 K
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 the campaign in Switzerland, and at the head of these 
 troops was Pirkheimer, to whom on his return his 
 fellow-citizens offered a golden cup. " We assume," 
 says Mr. IMiddleton-Wake, " that it is this cup which 
 Diirer places in the hand of the Goddess.'' With the 
 Swiss War are also associated the Coat of Arms with the 
 Cock and the even rarer (certainly not finer) Coat of' 
 Arms zaith a SJcidl. The one may symbolise the antici- 
 pated success, the other the failure, of the campaign 
 into Switzerland. 
 
 A reference to the Richard Fisher Sale Catalogue (at 
 Sotheby's, May 1892) affords as ready and as correct 
 a means as we are likely to obtain of estimating the 
 present value of fine Durer prints. Mr. Fisher's col- 
 lection was unequal ; but it was celebrated, and it was, 
 on the whole, admirable. It was, moreover, practically 
 complete, and in this way alone it represented an 
 extraordinary achievement in Collecting. Its greatest 
 feature was Mr. Fisher's possession of the Adam and 
 Eve in a condition of exce})tional brilliancy, and with a 
 long pedigree, from the John Barnard, Maberly, and 
 Hawkins collections. This was the first Albert Durer 
 that passed under the hammer on the occasion, and so 
 opened the sale of the Di'irers with a thunderclap, as 
 it were — Herr Meder paying =£"410 to bear it off in 
 triumph. Then came the Nativity, the charming 
 dainty little print, which Diirer himself speaks of as 
 the " Christmas Day." Mr. Gutekunst gave i?49 for 
 it. A fine impression of the Virgin with Long Hair 
 
 fetched i?51 ; an indifferent one of the more beautiful 
 
 146
 
 >
 
 DURER : THE " LITTLE MASTERS " 
 
 Virgin seated by a Wall, £\0, 15s. The St. Hubert 
 sold for i^48 — a finer impression of the same subject 
 selling, in the Holford Sale, just a year later, for o^l50 
 — the Melancholia, £2Q ; but, it must be remembered, 
 the Melancholia, though always one of the most sought 
 for, is not by any means one of the rarest Diirers. The 
 Knight of Death passed, for i?100, into the hands of 
 Mr. Gutekunst. An early impression of the Coat of 
 Arms -icith the Cock was bought by Mr. Kennedy for 
 ,^20; the Coat of Arms xoith tfie Shill going to Messrs. 
 Colnaghi for ci?42. In the Holford Sale a yet finer 
 impression of this last subject was bought by Herr 
 Meder for £75. 
 
 Before I leave, for a while at least, the prosaic ques- 
 tions of the Sale-Room, and pass on to direct attention 
 to the artistic virtues of the " Little Masters,"" let the 
 " beginning collector,"" as the quaint ])hrase runs, be 
 warned in regard to copies. It has not been left for an 
 age that imitates everything — that copies our charming 
 Battersea Enamel, taiit Men que rnal, and the " scale- 
 blue" of old Worcester, and the lustre of Oriental — it 
 has not been left for such an age to be the first to copy 
 Diirer. In fact, no one now-a-days bestows the labour 
 required in copying Diner. He is copied now-a-days 
 only in the craft of photogravure. Bnl, of old time, 
 Wierix, and less celel)rated men, copied In'ni gi-eatly. 
 Tliis is (I matter of wliicli tlie collector — at first at 
 leu.st — Yiiis need to beware. II nnist be stamped upon 
 his mind that Dinx-r's work at a certain ]K'ri()d did 
 
 ninch engage tiie copyist. It engaged the copyist only 
 
 147
 
 FINE rillNTS 
 
 less perhaps than did the work of Rembrandt himself, 
 throuo-h successive generations. 
 
 And now we speak, though briefly, of the seven 
 German " Little Masters," of whom the best are never 
 " little " in style, but, rather, great and pregnant, 
 richly charged with quality and meaning : " little " 
 only in the mere scale of their labour. The print- 
 buyer who is in that rudimentary condition that he 
 only considers the walls of his sitting-rooms, and buys 
 almost exclusively for their effective decoration, does 
 not look at the Little Masters. Upon a distant wall, 
 their works make little spots. But in a corner, near 
 the fire — on the right-hand side of that arm-chair in 
 which you seek to establish your most cossetted guest, 
 the person (of the opposite sex, generally) whom you 
 are glad to behold — a little frame containing half-a- 
 dozen Behams, Aldegrevers, to be looked at closely (pieces 
 of Ornament perhaps ; exercises in exquisite 1 e), adds 
 charm to an interior Avhich, under circumst nces of 
 Romance, may need indeed no added charm at all from 
 the mere possessions of the collector. Still — there are 
 moods. And if the German Little Masters come in 
 pleasantly enough, on an odd foot or so of wall, now 
 and then, how justified is their presence in the port- 
 folio — in the solander box — when the collector is really 
 a serious one, and when he no longer bestows upon 
 living, breathing Humanity all the solicitude that was 
 meant for his Behams ! 
 
 To talk more gravely, the German Little Masters 
 
 should indeed be collected far more widely than 
 
 148
 
 DDRER: THE "LITTLE MASTERS" 
 
 they are, amongst us. Scarcely anything in their 
 appeal is particular and local. Their qualities — the 
 qualities of the best of them — are exquisite and ster- 
 ling, and are for all Time. 
 
 The seven Little ]Masters, on whom the late Mr. W. 
 Bell Scott — one of the first people here in England 
 to collect them — wrote, in an inadequate series, one 
 of the few quite satisfactory books, are, Altdorfer, 
 Barthel Beham, Sebald Beham, Aldegrever, Pencz, Jacob 
 Binck, and Hans Brosamer. One or two of these may 
 c|uickly be discerned to be inferior to the others ; one 
 or two to be superior ; but it would be priggish to 
 attempt to range them in definite order of merit. 
 It may suffice to say that to me at least Aldegrever 
 and the Behams appeal most as men to be collected. 
 The Behams — Sebald especially — was a very fine Orna- 
 mentist. Aldegi-ever, it may be, was an Ornamentist 
 yet more faultless. Some examples of his Ornament, 
 the collector should certainly possess. And then he 
 will come back very probably to the Behams, recog- 
 nising in these two brothers a larger range than Alde- 
 grever had, and a sjjirit more dramatic — an entrance 
 more vivid and personal into human life, a keen in- 
 terest in human story. They were realists, not without 
 a touch of the ideal. And in design and execution, 
 they were consummate artists, and not only — which 
 they were too, of course — infinitely laborious and ex- 
 quisite craftsmen. 
 
 Adnin I{arts<h has catalogued, in his industrious 
 
 way, according to the best lights of his period, the 
 
 1 ID
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 works of the Little Masters. His volumes are the 
 foundation of all subsequent study. To Alttlorfer he 
 assigns ninety-six })ieces (I speak of course here, and 
 in every case, of pieces engraved on metal) ; to IJarthel 
 Beham, sixty-four ; to Sebald Beham — whose life, 
 though not a long, was yet a longer one than Barthel's 
 — two hundred and fifty-nine ; to Jacob Binck, ninety- 
 seven ; to George Pencz, a hundred and twenty-six ; 
 to Heinrich Aldegrever, no less than two hundred and 
 eighty-nine ; to Brosamer, four-and-twenty. But of 
 late years, as was to be expected, certain of these 
 masters have been the subjects of particular study. 
 Thus we have, in England, the dainty little catalogue 
 of Sebald Beham, by the Rev. W. J. Loftie — a book 
 delightfully printed in a very limited edition. That 
 book brings up the number of Sebald Beham''' assured 
 plates to two hundred and seventy-four. Dr. Ro. 'nberg 
 has also, in much detail, written in German upon the 
 ])lates of this fascinating artist ; and still more lately 
 M. Edouard Aumiiller has published, at Munich, in 
 the French tongue, ela])orate, though indeed scarcely 
 final, studies of the Behams and of Jacob Binck. 
 
 Of the German Little Masters, Albrecht Altdorfer is 
 the earliest. He was only nine yeai's Dlirer's junior; 
 nearly twenty years separate him from others of the 
 group. Born it really even at the present moment 
 seems difficult to say where, Altdorfer, Dr. Rosenberg 
 considers, was actually a pupil of Dlirer's — an appren- 
 tice, an inmate of his house, probably, soon after Diirer 
 
 as a quite young man, already prosperous and busy, 
 
 150
 
 D0RER:THE "LITTLE MASTERS" 
 
 took up his abode, with his bride, Agnes Frey, at the 
 large house by the Thiergarten Gate. But whatever 
 was the place of Altdorfer's birth and whatever the 
 place of his pupilage — and neither matter, as it seems, 
 is settled conclusively — Ratisbon is the city in which 
 his life was chiefly spent. There he was architect as 
 well as painter and engraver ; an official post was given 
 him ; and during the last decade of his career his 
 architectural work for Ratisbon caused, it is to be 
 presumed, the complete cessation of his work of an 
 engi-aver. Merits Altdorfer of course has — variety and 
 ingenuity amongst them — or his fame would hardly 
 have survived ; but Mr. W. B. Scott, whose criticism 
 of him was that of an artist naturally rather in sym- 
 pathy with the methods of his endeavour, never rises 
 to enthusiasm in his account of him. His drawing 
 is not found worthy of any warm commendation, nor 
 his craftsmanship with the copper. The great lessons 
 he miglit have learnt from Durer, he does not seem 
 fully to have appropriated. His design is deemed 
 more fantastic. But his range was not narrow, and 
 apart from his ))ractice in what is strictly line-en- 
 graving, he executed etchings of Landscape — caring 
 more than Diirer did, perhaj)s, for Landsc-aj)e for its 
 own sake : studying it indeed less lovingly in detail, 
 but with a certaiti then umisual reliance on the interest 
 of its general cH'ect. Some measure of romantic char- 
 acter belongs to his Landscape: "partly intensified," 
 says Mr. Scott, "and |»,ully deslroyed, by the eccentric 
 
 taste that appears in nearly everything from his hand." 
 
 l"51
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 The pine had fascination for him. "And he loaded 
 its boughs with fronds, Hke the feathers of birds, and 
 added long- lines, vagaries of lines, that have little or 
 no foundation in Nature." 
 
 Of both the Behanis, Mr. Loftie assures us that they 
 were pupils of Uiirer. Greater even than the artist I 
 have just been writing about, they show, it seems to 
 me, at once an influence more direct from Dlirer, and 
 an individuality more potent, of their own. Barthel, 
 the younger of the two brothers — one whose designs 
 Sebald, with all his gifts, was not too proud to now 
 and then copy — was born at Nuremberg in 1502. " Le 
 dessin de ses estampes," wi'ites M. Aumliller, "est 
 savant et gracieux, et son burin est d'une elegance 
 brillante et moelleuse." The words — though it is im- 
 possible, in a line or two, to generalise a great persona- 
 lity — are not badly chosen. Exiled from Nuremberg, 
 whilst still young, Barthel Beham laboured at Frankfort, 
 and, later, in Italy — a circumstance which accounts 
 for something in the character of his work. For, in 
 Barthel, the Italian influence is unmistakable ; he is, 
 as Mr. Scott says truly, " emancipated from the wilful 
 despising of the graces." In Italy, in 1540, Barthel 
 died. 
 
 Sebald Beham, the more prolific brother, whose 
 years, ere they were ended, numbered half a century 
 was born in 1500. He remained at home — not indeed 
 at Nuremberg, but long at Frankfort — yet, remaining 
 at home, his work was somehow more varied. A 
 
 classical subject one day, and peasant life the next, an 
 
 152
 
 DURER: THE "LITTLE MASTERS" 
 
 ornament now, and now a design symbolical like his 
 Melancholia — these interested him in turn ; and, as for 
 his technical achievement, his Coat of Arms ic'ith the 
 Cock (for he, like Durer, had that, as well as a Melan- 
 cholia) would suffice to show, had he nothing else to 
 show, his unsurpassable fineness of detail. " Cette 
 superbe gravure," M. Aumiiller says — and most justifi- 
 ably, for technical excellence cannot go any further, 
 nor is there wanting majesty of Style. At the Loftie 
 Sale some happy person acquired for dP4 this lovely 
 little masterpiece : at the Duraz/o Sale, £5 was the 
 price of it. Analysis of Sebald Beham"'s prints shows 
 that of his noble work on metal seventy-five subjects 
 are suggested by sacred and nineteen by "profane" 
 history. Mythology claims thirty-eight designs, and 
 Allegory thirty-four. Genre subjects, treated with the 
 various qualities of observation, humour, warmth, ab- 
 sorb some seventy plates, (^f vignettes and ornaments, 
 there are about two score. 
 
 In 1881 — several years after he had finished his 
 Catalogue — the Rev. W. J. Loftie sold in Germany his 
 remarkable collection of Sebald Rehanrs works. Next 
 perhaps, in imjjortance, in recent times, to Mr. Loftie's 
 collection, was that of Richard Eisher — disj)ersed at 
 a sale I have already spoken of. I'roin the I'isher 
 Sale, which was so comprehensive in its character, 
 we will tiike note of the j)i-ic('.s hci-c in England of at 
 least a few fine things — premising that whatever be the 
 prices fetched i)y an exce])tional larity, a very few 
 
 pounds (often only three or foin-), spent (•arcfiilK , will 
 
 15:i
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 buy, at a good dealers, a fine Behain. In the Fisher 
 Sale then, the Madonna and Child zcith the Parrot 
 fetched £5, 10s. ; the Madonna zcith the Skeping Ckild^ 
 £\1, 10s. (Meder) ; the Venus and Cupid, i?3, 10s. 
 (Deprez) ; the niao-nificently drawn Lcda, only eleven 
 shillings — but then it must have been a bad impres- 
 sion, for a fine one at the Loftie Sale fetched dC4, 10s., 
 and at the Kalle Sale, £6 — Death Surprising- a Woman 
 in her Sleep, £S, 12s. (Meder); the Baboon and tlie 
 Tivo Coiiples, £5 ; the Tzcv Buffoons, First State, 
 £7, 12s. (Deprez) ; the Ornament zcith a Cuirass and 
 the tzco Cupids, £S, 10s. At the same sale, Alde- 
 grever's Virg'in Sitting had gone for £1, lOs., and 
 Barthel Behanrs Lucretia for £^, his Fight for the 
 Standard for ^^4, his Vignette zcith Four Cupids for 
 £4!, 4s. But it ought perhaps to be remembered that 
 in several cases the representation of the Little Masters 
 in Mr. Fisher's Sale was not good enough to bring the 
 prices which, under favourable circumstances, are wont 
 to be realised by the finest impressions. In regard to 
 Barthel Beham, I will add that the highest price 
 accustomed to be fetched by any print of his, is 
 fetched by his rare, strong portrait of Charles the Fifth. 
 Having said what I have of it, I cannot say that it 
 is undesirable, but it is quite undesirable if it stands 
 alone — for it is exceptional rather than characteristic. 
 In mere size, for one thing. A First State of it has 
 fetched as much as sixty pounds : a Second State 
 averages about twelve. 
 
 To Aldegi-ever — perhaps the very greatest of the 
 
 154
 
 DDRER: THE "LITTLE MASTERS" 
 
 Omanientists — the most general of recent students of 
 the School, Dr. Rosenberg, does the least justice. Mr. 
 Scott, upon the other hand, asserts his position with 
 strength ; nor will it be unprofitable for amateur or 
 collector if I cjuote, at some length, what he says. 
 The Behanis, who were great, and Altdorfer, who was 
 scarcely great, we have — for our present })urposes — 
 done with already. But about the others ]\Ir. Scott 
 may well be heard. " George Pencz,"" he reminds us, 
 "left the Fatherland and subjected himself to Italian 
 influence, both in manipulation and in invention, while 
 Brosamer and Jacob Binck are of comparatively little 
 consequence."" I hope — may I say in a parenthesis ? — 
 that Mr. Scott attached great weight to his "com- 
 paratively,"" for otherwise he did the charming work 
 of Jacob Binck a rude injustice. But to proceed — 
 " Aldegi'ever is the most worthy successor to Diirer, 
 and is the gi-eatest master of invention, with the truest 
 German traditions of sentiment and romance, as well as 
 the most prolific ornamentist. He remains all his life 
 skilfully atlvancing in the command of his graver, to 
 which he remains true. Like Lucas of Levden, he lives 
 a secluded \\^(;^ .hikI his niiniature prints continue to 
 issue from his hands with more and more richness and 
 imlej)endence of poetic thought, until we lose sight of 
 him, dying where he had HvchI, in the small town of 
 Soest, without unv wi-itcr to i-crord the particulars of 
 his modest life." It may be added that Rosenberg 
 considers not only that Aldegrever was never under 
 
 Di'irer's direct tuition — tlnxigh cairying out tiie Diirer 
 
 155
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 traditions — but also that he was never in Nuremberg at 
 all. And, by this means isolating Aldegrever from the 
 coterie that grew up in the Franconian town, Rosenberg 
 derives him rather from Lucas van Leyden. To which 
 Mr. Scott answers, that if Aldegrever never left his 
 native Westphalia, never even visited Nuremberg and 
 Augsburg, " he apprehended the movement wonderfully 
 from a distance, and apj^ropriated as much as he chose 
 — happily for his works — as much as properly amalga- 
 mated with his Northern nature." 
 
 A great name has passed our lips in discussing this 
 thing briefly. I wish that there were space here — 
 that it had been a part of my scheme to treat, not so 
 utterly inadequately, Lucas van Leyden. But in a 
 book of this sort — which must seize, so to say, upon 
 finger-posts, where it can — ^^half of the business is 
 renunciation, and I renounce, unwillingly, the fau' 
 discussion of the great early Flemish master. Dlirer 
 himself approved of him : gladly exchanged original 
 prints with Master Lucas of Leyden, who showed 
 him courtesy on a journey. Numerically the work of 
 Lucas is not inferior — rather the other way — to Albert 
 Durer's. His range of subject was hardly less extensive, 
 thouo-h his range of mind was less vast. In a dramatic 
 theme, Lucas of Leyden could hold his own with any 
 one. He had less of unction and of sentiment — less 
 depth, in fine, very likely. But the great prints of the 
 Renaissance in the North are not properly represented " 
 in a collector's portfolios, if the work of this master of 
 
 various and prolific industiy is altogether omitted. His 
 
 156
 
 DtJREH : THE " LITTLE MASTERS " 
 
 draughtsmanship, though it improved with Time, was 
 never the searching draughtsmanship of Diirer, indeed, 
 or of one or two of Dlirers followers. Yet it was ex- 
 pressive and spirited. And spirit, vivacit}', a certain 
 grace even, are well discovered in the rare work of 
 Lucas in a particular field in which the Behams and 
 Aldegi-ever triumphed habitually and in which Albert 
 was occasionally great — I mean the field of Ornament. 
 The rare Panneaii cTOrnements (Bartsch, 164 — dated 
 1528), in scheme of light and shade, in scheme of action, 
 in ingenious, never-wearying symmetry of line, in tell- 
 ing execution, reaches a place near the summit. The 
 collector, when the chance offers, does well to give the 
 six or seven, eight or ten guineas perhaps, which, in 
 some fortunate hour, may be its ransom. 
 
 15-
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Earliest Italian Prints — They interest the AfHiqiiaty 
 more than the Collector — Nielli — Baccio Baldini — 
 Mantcgna and his restless energy — The calm of Zoan 
 Andrea — Campagnola — The Master of the Caduceus 
 — His " Pagan sentiment " — Marc Aiitonio — His 
 first practice — His art ripest when his prints 
 interpret Raphael — Important Sales of the Italian 
 Prints. 
 
 As one of the chief reasons for the composition of 
 the present volume is that the collector, whether a 
 beginner or more advanced, may have ready access to 
 a little book which supplements to some extent, but 
 does not attempt to supersede, any one amongst the 
 labours of earlier students — and which treats often 
 with especial prominence themes which it seems lay 
 scarcely at all within the range of their incjuiries — 
 it will hardly be expected that much shall be said 
 here on the various departments of Italian Engraving. 
 Italian Engraving, from the 7iielli of Florentine gold- 
 smiths to the larger method and selected line of Marc 
 Antonio, has for generations occupied the leisure and 
 been the subject of the investigations of many studious 
 
 men. Volumes have been written about it : treatises, 
 
 158
 
 ITALIAN LINE ENGRAVERS 
 
 articles, catalogues, coiTespondence innumerable. About 
 Italian EnoTavino; — in any one of its branches — it 
 would be as easy, or as difficult, to say something 
 new, and at the same time to the point, as it would 
 be to Avi'ite with freshness about the decorations of the 
 Sistine Chapel or such an accepted masterpiece as the 
 Madonna di San Sisto. The few words I shall write 
 upon the subject will be of a wholly rudimentary 
 character. If the reader wishes to go into this subject 
 elaborately, I refer him at once to experts. No one 
 is less an expert upon it than I am ; but partly that 
 all sense of balance shall not be wanting to this book, 
 and partly that the beginner, even with this book 
 alone, shall not grope wholly in the dark, the place of 
 the Italians must be briefly recognised. In recognising 
 it, I do not claim to do more, of my own proper know- 
 ledge, than bring to bear upon the question the results 
 of some more general studies, and perhaps the side- 
 lights thrown from more particular investigations into 
 other branches of the engraver''s achievement. 
 
 The rik'Hi — those things wrought so minutely by the 
 early goldsmiths, IVIiiso da Finiguerra and the rest — 
 which are the very foundations of Engraving, are, to 
 begin with, introuvahh\ To the practical collector then, 
 it cannot be pretended that they aj)peal, though they 
 may engage the attention of the studeiil. Then again, 
 in fine condition, not sj)()ilt by the retouching — nay, 
 re-working — of the plate, or the wear of the particular 
 impression tliroiigli its long life of more than three 
 hundred vears, the somewhat niaturer work oftheirreat
 
 FINE rillNTS 
 
 Primitives, or of those who, like Mantegna himself, 
 stands, a link upon a borderland, is scarcely within 
 the region of practical commerce. The finer work of 
 the line-eno-ravers upon copper, of the earlier Renais- 
 sance in Italy, does not, save on the rarest occasions, 
 appear in Sotheby's auction-room. Perhaps its very 
 scarcity, its gradual absorption during more than 
 one generation, into such great private collections as 
 are not likely to be dispersed, and, yet more, into 
 national, or university, or municipal collections, into 
 which everything entering takes at once, and with no 
 period of novitiate, the black veil — perhaps this very 
 scarcity is accountable for the lack of vivid interest in 
 such work on the part of the collector of modern mind. 
 After all, even masterpieces have their day : nmch more 
 those things of which it must be said, that though en- 
 dowed with a great vigour of conception and executed 
 often in trenchant, if not persuasive, form, they do not 
 in execution reach the standards set up for us — and 
 passing now almost into the position of " precedents "" 
 — by the later technique. 
 
 If, of the work of the greatest master of the Ger- 
 man Renaissance — of the greatest, most original, most 
 comprehensive mind in the whole of German Art — 
 it is possible to speak as that very fair and penetrating 
 critic, Mr. P. G. Hamerton s})eaks, in his general 
 essay on Engraving, which appears in the " Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica,"" what is to be said of the earlier 
 Italians? Why, in the very passage in which Mr. 
 
 Hamerton — far too intelligent, of course, to deny the 
 
 160
 
 ITALIAN LINE ENGRAVERS 
 
 gi-eatness of his qualities — devotes to Diirer, they, by 
 something more than impHcation, are to take their 
 share of the dispraise. After telling us that Martin 
 Schonffauer's art is a stride in advance of that of " The 
 Master of 1466," Mr. Hamerton adds, "Outline and 
 shade, in Schongauer, are not nearly so much separated 
 as in Baccio Baldini, and the shading, generally in curved 
 lines, is far more masterly than the straight shading 
 of Mantegna. Diirer continued Schongauer's curved 
 shading with increasing manual dexterity and skill ; 
 and as he found himself able to perform feats with the 
 burin which amused both himself and his buyers, he 
 overloaded his plates" — "some" of his plates, would 
 here have been a reasonable qualification — "with de- 
 tails, each of which he finished with as much care as if 
 it were the most important thing in the composition." 
 " The engravers of those days " — it is said further — 
 " had no conception of any necessity for subordinating 
 one part of their work to another. In Dih-er, all 
 objects are on the same plane." Here Mr. Hamerton 
 generalises too much ; but a strong, exaggerated state- 
 ment on the matter directs at all events our attention 
 to it. 
 
 A like criticism could be passed on some, though, it 
 must needs be said, on less, of the Italian work of tiie 
 earHer time. As a rule, when the ])ure Primitives had 
 passed, Italian work was less complicated. In Mantegna 
 himself, an immense energy in the figure — the coniijlete- 
 ness with which the artist was charged with the need of 
 
 expressing action, and, it may l)e, the sentiment besides, 
 
 161 L
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 in which the action had its source — restrained him, 
 stayed his hand, diverted his attention from inappro- 
 priate or supei-Huous detail. And there were other 
 ItaHan artists of the hurin in whom a rising feehng 
 for large and decorative gi-ace had something of the 
 same effect. And when we come to Marc Antonio him- 
 self — trained though he was as a copyist of Northern 
 Schools — we see him ahle, when addressing himself to 
 render the compositions of Raphael, to subordinate 
 everything to the attainment of noble and elegant 
 contour. The finest Marc Antonios — the Saint Cecilia 
 and the Lucretia, to name but two of them (respec- 
 tively £25 and £110 in a great Sale three years ago) 
 — were ^\TOUght under Raphael's immediate influence ; 
 were sculpturesque and simple, never elaborately pic- 
 torial — the result, no doubt, in part, of the circumstance 
 that Raphael as well as his engraver recognised that if 
 designs (drawings, not pictures) were the objects of 
 copy, they could be interpreted without going outside 
 the proper art of the engraver. Whatever be the 
 fashions of the moment — and Marc Antonio's prices, 
 notwithstanding an exceptional sum for an exceptional 
 print, are, in the main, low — it must be remembered 
 that, even with his limitations, it was in him and 
 in his School that real pure line-engraving reached 
 maturity. " He retained," says Mr. Hamerton, sum- 
 marisinir well enough the situation in a sentence — " he 
 retained much of the early Italian manner in his back- 
 gi'ounds, where its simplicity gives a desirable sobriety ,' 
 but his figures are boldly modelled in curved lines, 
 
 162
 
 ITALIAN LINE ENGRAVERS 
 
 crossing each other in the darker shades, but left single 
 in the passages from dark to light, and breaking away 
 in fine dots as they approach the light itself, which is 
 of pm-e Avhite paper." As general description, this is 
 excellent; but if the new collector, taking to Marc 
 Antonio, and buying him at a time when, if I may 
 adopt the phi-aseology of Capel Court, his stock is 
 quoted below par, wishes the opportunity of guidance 
 in the study of the development of his art, let him 
 take up almost the latest book that deals with the 
 subject with minuteness and suggestiveness, if it may 
 not be invariably accurate or systematically arranged 
 — I mean the " Early History of Engraving in North 
 Italv,"" by the late Richard Fisher, whose name as a 
 collector and connoisseur I do not mention now for 
 the first time. \^ery interesting too is all that Mr. 
 Fisher has to say about " the Master of the Caduceus," 
 Diirer's friend and instructor, Jacopo de' Barbarj, who, 
 known as Jacob Walsh, was supposed to be German, 
 although practising much at Venice. Passavant, who 
 atlmits some thirty pieces by him, considers him of 
 German birth — a tiling allowed neither by Fisher nor 
 Diiplessis. "Ill single figures'' — writes Mr. Fisher — 
 "we have the best illustration of his talent — Judith 
 with the head of Ilolofernes .iiid a young woman look- 
 ing at hei-self in a mirror." At the Rritish Museum a 
 bust portrait of a young woman, catalogued by Rartsch 
 as amongst the anonymous Italians, has been given to 
 Barbarj. M. (ialichon considers him eminently Pagan 
 
 in sentiment. Nor is this incomj)atil)le with Jlichard 
 
 U)3
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 Fisher's statement that in style his Holy Families are 
 completely Italian. 
 
 " La Gra^alre en Italie avant Marc Antoiiie'" — a sub- 
 stantial work by Delaborde — is a book that will not 
 pass unnoticed by those whose choice is for the earlier 
 membei's of the Italian School. Campagnola, it may 
 be — whose chief piece, the Assumption, fetched more 
 than 0^50 at the Durazzo Sale, and whose Dance of 
 Cupids reached .-£^50 at the Marochetti — he will find 
 adequately treated there ; and there too are made in 
 compact form certain instructive comparisons between 
 Mantegna's work and that of Zoan Andrea and Antonio 
 da Brescia whose labours have their likeness to Man- 
 tegna's own. In the rare Dance of' Damsels — " Dance of 
 Four Women," it ought rather to be, for in at least one 
 of its little-draped figures the gravity and fadedness 
 of middle age is well contrasted with the firm and fresh 
 contour and gay alacrity of youth — Zoan Andrea, whose 
 prints are " generalement preferables " to those of Da 
 Brescia, shows finely not only Mantegna's design^ but 
 that something of his own which the gi-eat Mantuan's 
 design did not give him. Many people have written well 
 on Mantegna ; he provokes people, he stimulates them ; 
 and Mr. Sidney Colvin, on the so-called " Mantegna 
 Playing-Cards," has written learnedly as an investigator, 
 giving to designs misnamed and misunderstood their 
 right significance. But it is from Delaljorde that I will 
 allow myself to quote one brief passage, which is full 
 at least of personal conviction. What more especially 
 
 characterises — so he puts it — Andrea Mantegna's en- 
 
 164
 
 ITALIAN LINE ENGRA\TRS 
 
 gi'aved work, is that it is " un melange singulier d'ardeur 
 
 et de patience, de sentiment spontane et d'intentions 
 
 systematiques : c'est enfin dans Texecution matcrielle, 
 
 le calme d'une volonte sure d'elle-meme et Tinquietude 
 
 d'une main imte par sa lutte avec le moyen." Zoan 
 
 Andrea's prints do not present these contrasts. " Tout 
 
 y i:psulte d'un travail poursuivi avec une parfaite cgalite 
 
 d'humeur ; tout y respire la meme confiance tranquille 
 
 dans Tautorite des enseignements re^us, le meme besoin 
 
 de s'en tenir aux conquetes deja faites et aux traditions 
 
 deja consacrees/' By Mantegna, about twenty -five 
 
 accepted plates have reached our time. By Zoan 
 
 Andrea, a larger number have at least been catalogued, 
 
 and it is argued by some that the least authentic, as 
 
 well as the least creditable, are sometimes those which 
 
 bear his signature. 
 
 Did I desire to manufacture " jmdding,"''' nothing 
 
 would be easier than for me to extend to a long 
 
 chapter this summary assemblage of brief and almost 
 
 incidental notes on the Italian Line-Engraving of the 
 
 remote Past. But as the subject itself is one to which I 
 
 have never yet been fortunate enough to devote such 
 
 a measure of study as iniglit entitle nie to diiiin to 
 
 be heard when speaking of it, and as llii- literature 
 
 of the su]))ect exists in such abundance for the curious, 
 
 I can affbid to he short. It niuv, liowever, be of some 
 
 little interest to the collector, if, before j)assiiig on to 
 
 the discussion of another branch of I'rint-Collecting in 
 
 which I have ventured to take my own line, ;iii(i am 
 
 willing on all occasions to back my own o|)inion, we 
 
 Ui5
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 look a little into such records of the Sale - room as 
 
 throw light upon the changing money values of the 
 
 engi'avings by Italian masters. 
 
 Mr. Julian Marshall, now with us in his middle 
 
 age, began collecting when he was so young that his 
 
 great sale occurred as long ago as 1864. Values have 
 
 changed since that day, very much. Of his four prints 
 
 by Mantegna, only one — The Flagellation — fetched 
 
 more than £1'^. That one reached £9A^ — an early 
 
 perfect state of The Entombment going for £\\, 10s., 
 
 and Christ Descending into Hell for £^. Domenico 
 
 Campagnola"'s Descent of the Holy Ghost then fetched 
 
 c^2, 2s. At the Sykes Sale the same impression had 
 
 fetched ^£^3; at the Harford, ^1, 15s. At the Marochetti 
 
 Sale in 1868, not a single Mantegna, unless Christ risen 
 
 Jrom the Dead, fetched a price of importance, and 
 
 this only ten guineas ; but among the Ivx?.rc Antonios 
 
 the Adam and Eve in Paradise sold to Mr. Colnaghi 
 
 for .£'136, and TJie Massacre of the Innocents to Mr. 
 
 Holloway for £'\<0. The Two Fauns carrying a Child 
 
 in a Basket — engi-aved by Marc Antonio, in his finest 
 
 manner, after an antique — realised £5Q, and the Saint 
 
 Cecilia £5\. In the Bale Collection, in 1881, the St. 
 
 Cecilia fetched £^0, and Mariette's impression of the 
 
 extraordinarily rare Dance of Cupids ef'241. That was 
 
 borne off by M. Clement, who was then what M. 
 
 Bouillon is now — " marchand d'estampes de la Bib- 
 
 liotheque Nationale." In the Holford Sale, twelve 
 
 years afterwards, Marc Antonio's Adam and Eve sold 
 
 to M. Danlos for i?180 ; the Massacre of the Innocents 
 
 166
 
 ITALIAN LINE ENGRAVERS 
 
 (from the Lely Collection) to the same dealer for .£^190 ; 
 and the St. Cecilia and Lucretia both to IVIr. Gutekunst 
 — the first for £^\ ; the second for £QQ. The great 
 price fetched by a Marc Antonio at this Sale was, 
 however, that paid for The Plag'ue — a print which M. 
 Danlos acquired for i?370. Taking note of such a sum, 
 one could hardly believe perhaps that Marc Antonios 
 were not rising; but when a master falls, it is in the 
 minor, not the more eminent pieces — or, at least, in 
 average, not exceptional impressions — that we trace 
 most certainly a decline of value. And, taking the 
 »S'^. Cecilia alone — one of the most charming of the 
 subjects, as I have said before, though not one of the 
 rarest — we find, on the three occasions of its sale that 
 I have cited, a high price, one less high, and then again 
 a lower. We find, indeed, comparing the prices that 
 were fetched by two impressions not presumably very 
 difierent — for both were in great Sales — that in 1893 a 
 St. Cecilia brought little more than half of what it 
 brought in 1868. The (juestion now for the collector*'s 
 judgment, as far as money is concerned, is, Is it safe 
 or unsafe for him to buy at just the present stage of 
 a "falling market"'.'' Have Marc Antonios touched 
 bottom .'' If he buys them now, will he — in the phrase 
 of sprightly Imlies "fluttering" in "South Africans'" — 
 will he be "getting in on the ground floor ""r* 
 
 The collector has a right to ask himself these 
 .seemingly irreverent (juestions. Nor uill 1k' love Ai-t 
 less, or have an eye less delicate, because he is obliged 
 to ask them. I do not know that the possessions of a
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 prudent collector should — taking things all round — 
 bring him, if he desires to sell, much less than he 
 gave for them. It may be quite enough that as long 
 as he keeps and enjoys them, he shall lose the interest 
 of his money. If, in the interval, the value of his 
 prints happens to increase, so much the better for him 
 — obviously. But he enjoys the things themselves, and 
 can scarcely exact that increase. 
 
 168
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 French Line-Engravers of the Eighteenth Century 
 -' render well its original Art — The Prints from Watteau, 
 
 Lancret, and Pater — Watteau s Characteristics — Char- 
 din's Interiors and Studies of the Bourgeoisie — Success 
 of his Domestic Themes — His Portraits and Still-Life 
 are never rendered — Tlie lasting popularitt/ of Greuze 
 — Boucher Prints at a discount — Fragonard and 
 Baudouin — Lavreince and Moreau. 
 
 The Eighteenth Century in France witnessed the rise, 
 the development, and the decay or fall of a great 
 School of Art of which the English public remains, even 
 to this day, all but completely ignorant. The easy 
 seductiveness of the maidens of Greuze, with gleaming 
 eyes and glistening shoulders, has indeed secured in 
 Enirland for a certain side of that artist's work a 
 measure of notice in excess of its real im])ortance; 
 and a succession of accidents and the good taste of 
 two or three connoisseurs out of a hundretl — they were 
 men of another generation — have matle this country the 
 home and resting-place of some of the best of the 
 pictures and drawings of \Vatteau. But even Watteau 
 is not to be found within our National CJallery. 'I'bere 
 Greu/e and Lancret — Chardin having but lulcly joined 
 them with but a single pleasant but inade(juate ])icture 
 — there Greuz-e and Lancret, seen at least in whiiL is 
 
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 adequate and characteristic, share the task of representing 
 French Art of the period when it was most truly French. 
 They are unequal to the mission. And until some 
 can join them who will fulfil it better, the painted 
 work of the French Eighteenth Century will hardly 
 receive its due. 
 
 Fortunately, however, French Eighteenth Century 
 artists fared well at the hands of the line-engi-avers. 
 Even of a painter who possessed more than many 
 others the charm of colour, it could be said by one of 
 the keenest of his critics that the originality of his 
 work passed successfully from the picture to the print. 
 That is what Denis Diderot wrote of Jean Baptiste 
 Simeon Chardin, and it is true of them all, from 
 Watteau downwards. Theirs was the century of Line- 
 Engraving in France, as it was that of Mezzotint in 
 England. And the practitioners of Line-Engraving 
 and of Mezzotint were something beyond craftsmen. 
 Not only were they artists in their own departments — 
 some of them painted, some of them designed : they 
 were in sympathy with Art and possessed by its spirit. 
 Hence the peculiar excellence of their work with burin 
 or scraper — the high success of labours which their 
 intelligence and flexibility forbade to be simply 
 mechanical. 
 
 An Exhibition which at my suggestion the Fine 
 
 Art Society w^as good enough to venture on, eleven 
 
 years ago — but which attracted so little attention from 
 
 the great public we wanted to engage, that it must 
 
 some day, I suppose, be repeated — aimed to show those 
 
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 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 engravings in which, with fullest effect, the line-engra- 
 vers of the Eighteenth Century rendered the thought 
 and the impression of painters or of draughtsmen who 
 were, in most cases, their contemporaries. Watteau 
 was the first of these painters. The prints after his 
 pictures were chiefly wrought in the years directly 
 following his far too early death. His friend, M. de 
 Julienne, planned and saw closely to the execution of 
 that best monument to Watteau's memory. Cochin 
 and Aveline, Le Bas and Audran, Surugue and Brion, 
 Tardieu and I^aurent Cars, worked dexterously or 
 nobly, as the case might be, in perpetuation of the 
 master's dignity and grace. Lancret and Pater were 
 often translated by the same interpreters. Chardin's 
 work was popularised — as far as France is concerned — 
 a very few years after, and with substantially the same 
 effect. Later in the century, some changes which were 
 not all improvements, began to be discernible in the 
 newer plates. The manly method of which Laurent 
 Cars was about the most conspicuous master, yielded 
 a little to the softer ])ractice of the interjn-eters of 
 Lavreince or to the airy yet not inexact daintiness 
 of the method of the translators of Moreau. The 
 later style of engraving was suited to the later 
 draughtsmanship and painting. Probably indeed it 
 was adopted with a certain consciousness of their needs. 
 Anvhow, not one of the conspicuous figures in the 
 historv of French Eighteenth (Century Design — excejit 
 I^tour, who practically has not been reproduced at all 
 
 — can be said to have siiHt-nd seriously at the hands of 
 
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 his translators. What French pictorial artists thought 
 
 and saw and tried to tell, upon their canvases and 
 
 drawing papers, is, in the main, to be read in the 
 
 prints after their works. In these prints we may note 
 
 alike the triumphs and the failures of the real French 
 
 School. There is no denying its deficiencies. But it 
 
 is as free from conventionality as the gi'eat School of 
 
 Holland — as independent of tradition — and it is as true 
 
 to the life that it essays to depict. 
 
 Along the whole of the Eighteenth Century — not 
 
 in France only — Watteau, who lived in it but twenty 
 
 years, is the dominating master. To put the matter 
 
 roughly and briefly, he is the inventor of familiar 
 
 grace in Art. His treatment of the figure had its 
 
 perceptible influence even upon the beautiful design 
 
 of Gainsborough ; and the way in which he saw his 
 
 world of men and women dictated a method to his 
 
 successors in France, down to the revival of the more 
 
 academic Classicism. Artists — when they have been 
 
 so comprehensive as to occupy themselves with other 
 
 people's Art — have known generally that Watteau's 
 
 name has got to stand among only ten or a dozen 
 
 of the greatest, but the English amateurs, or rather 
 
 English picture and print buyers, are still but few 
 
 who are accjuainted with his range and feel the sources 
 
 of his power. He has not been very popular, because, 
 
 according to ordinary notions, there is but scanty 
 
 subject in his designs. The characters in his drama 
 
 are doing little — they are doing nothing, perhaps. 
 
 But as the knowledge of what real Art is, extends, 
 
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 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 and as our sensibility to beauty becomes more refined, 
 we shall ask. less, in presence of our pictures, what the 
 people are doing, and shall ask more, what they are. 
 Are they engaging? — we shall want to know. Are 
 they pleasant to live with .'' 
 
 Watteau placed a real humanity in an ideal land- 
 scape; but it was still a chosen people that entered 
 into his Promised Land, and the chosen people were 
 ladies of the Court and Theatre, and winning children, 
 and presentable men. His pictures — all the large, 
 elaborate, finely wrought prints after them — are the 
 record of Avhat was in some measure in these peoj^le's 
 daily lives, yet it was even more in his o^\ti dream. 
 "Toute une creation de poeme et de reve est sortie 
 de sa tete, emplissant son oeuvre de Telegance d'une 
 vie sumaturelle."" Through all his art he takes his 
 pleasant com})any to the selected places of the world, 
 and there is always halcyon weather. 
 
 Sometimes it is only the comedians of his day — 
 whose mobile faces Watteau had seen behind the foot- 
 lights of the stage — who make modest picnic, as in 
 the Champs Khjstc.s (the engraving by Tardieu) — find 
 shade as in the BosqiLct de Biuchm (the engraving by 
 Cochin), or (-njov at leisin-e the terraced gardens, the 
 vista, the great trees of the Perspective (the engraving 
 bv Crepy). And sometimes — inhabitants no more of 
 a real world — the jiersons of bis (b'unia j)rej)arc, with 
 free bearing, to .set out upon long journeys. It is now 
 a pilgrimage to Cythera {L''Kinh(irqiieiii( iit pour ( 'i/thire, 
 
 or I lie Iti-siilii /'(/y/^r/^/zr/r/)— suddenly thev have been 
 
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 transported indeed to the "enchanted isle" (Le Bas's 
 drawing of the distant mountains in Vile Enchantec, 
 is, I may say in an underbreath, a little indefinite and 
 puzzling). In any case the land that Watteau's art has 
 made more beautiful than ordinary Nature, is peopled by 
 a Humanity keenly and finely observed, and portrayed 
 with an unlimited control of vivacious gesture and of 
 subtle expression. 
 
 The unremitting study that made not only possible 
 but sure an unvarying success, in themes so manifestly 
 limited, is evidenced best in such collections of Watteau's 
 drawings as that acquired gradually by the British 
 Museum, and that yet finer one inherited by the late 
 IVIiss James, and now, alas ! dispersed. There the com- 
 plete command of line and character is best of all 
 made clear, and the solid groundwork for success in 
 Watteau's pictures is revealed. Elsewhere — in the 
 " Masters of Genre Painting " — I have found space to 
 explain more fully than can be done in these pages, 
 that however manifestly limited were his habitual 
 themes, his range was really great enough, since — not 
 to speak of the " Elysian Fields "" — it covered the land- 
 scape and the life of the France he knew. He has 
 drawn beggars as naturally as did Murillo ; negi'oes 
 as fearlessly as Rubens ; people of the bourgeoisie as 
 faithfully almost as Chardin. And, far from the cut 
 chestnut-trees on whose trimmed straightness there 
 falls in an un])roken mass the level light of his gardens, 
 AVatteau draws at need the open and common country, 
 
 peasants and the soldiery, the baggage-train passing 
 
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 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 along the endless roads from some citadel that Vauban 
 planned. What Watteau saw was the sufficient and 
 the great foundation of all that he imagined, and his 
 art's abantlonment of the everyday world was to exalt 
 and to reline, rather than to forget it. 
 
 The line-engravings after Watteau — largeish, deco- 
 rative, vigorous while delicate — remain comparatively in- 
 expensive. A rare impression " before lettei-s '' attains, 
 perhaps, now and then a fancy price; but Time has 
 very little affected the money value of the impressions 
 with full title, which, if reasonable care is exercised, 
 can be secured in fine condition, of such a dealer as 
 Colnaghi, here in England, and in Paris, of Danlos, 
 say, or of Bouillon — occupied though they all of 
 them are, habitually, with more costly things. Often 
 two or three sovereigns buy you an excellent Watteau, 
 clean and bnght, and not bereft of margin. To have 
 to give as much as £5 for one, would seem almost 
 a hardshij). And the work of Lancret and Pater — 
 ingenious, interesting practitioners in Watteau's School 
 — may be annexed at an expense even less considerable. 
 
 Lancret was but a follower of ^Vattc'au : Pater was 
 coiifessedlv a pupil. We shall have to come to Char- 
 din to find in French Art the next inuii thoroughly 
 original. And (li.udiii was n gix-at master. Rut 
 I^mcret and I'atcr, though they arc but secondary, 
 are still interesting figures. Neither of them, inuta- 
 tive though they were in varying degrees — uiiMicr of 
 them nuule any pretensions to their forerunner's in- 
 spired reverie. Lancret, as fur as his invention was 
 
 IT 
 
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 concerned, was at one time satisiied with a .symbolism 
 that was obvious, not to say bald. At another, as in 
 the sedate UHivcr (engraved by Le Bas), and the 
 charming pictures of the games of children, Le Jeu 
 de Cache-caclie and Le Jeu des Qiiatre Coins (both 
 of them engraved by De Larmessin), he was gi*ace- 
 fuUy real, without effort at a more remote imagina- 
 tion than the themes of reality in gentle or in middle- 
 class life exacted. At another time again, he lived 
 so much in actual things, that he could make the 
 portraits, not of deep grave men indeed such as the 
 Bossuets and the Fenelons of the Seventeenth Century, 
 but of the lighter celebrities of his careless day. That 
 day was Louis the Fifteenth's — " c'etait le beau temps 
 ou Camargo trouvait ses jupes trop longues pour danser 
 la gargouillade." And Lancret painted Mdlle. Camargo 
 (and Lam-ent Cars engi-aved her), springing to lively 
 airs. Voltaire had said to her, distinguishing all her 
 alacrity and fire from the more cautious graces of 
 Salle, the mistress of poetic pantomime — Voltaire had 
 said to her — 
 
 " Les nymphes sautent comme vous, 
 Et les Graces daiisent comme elle." 
 
 And the truth of the description is attested by Lan- 
 
 crefs picture, and by the rosy and vivacious pastel in 
 
 Latour's Saint-Quentin Gallery. 
 
 Pater, a fellow-townsman of Antoine Watteau's, was 
 
 his pupil only in Watteau's later years. At that 
 
 time Watteau suffered from an irritability bred of 
 
 an exhausting disease and of a yet more exhausting 
 
 176
 
 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 genius. ]\Iaster and pupil fell out. But, in his last 
 days of all, Watteau summoned to him the painter who 
 had come from his own to^^^l, and in a month, for which 
 the younger artist was ever gi-ateful. Pater was taught 
 more than he hiul ever been taught before. The pupil 
 had the instinct for prettiness and gi'ace, and in culti- 
 vating it "W^atteau was useful. But there was one thing 
 the master could not teach him — originality. And 
 his record of the engaging trivialities of daily life, 
 where pleasure was most gi'acious and life most easy, 
 was undertaken by a mind wholly contented with its 
 task. The mind aspired no farther. The faces of 
 Watteau, especially in his studies, are often faces of 
 thoughtful beauty ; sometimes, of profound and sad- 
 dening experience. But, like a lesser Mozart — and 
 the Mozart of a particular mood — Pater proffers us 
 his engajrinf; allcirro. The aim of all his art — its 
 light but successful endeavour — is summed up in the 
 title of one of the prettiest of his prints and pictures. 
 It is, I^ cUsir de plaire. 
 
 Presently we leave that world of graceful fantasy, 
 which Watteau invented, and his pupils prolonged — 
 a workl in which dainty refreshments are served to 
 chosen conjj)anics under serene skies — and, still in the 
 full middle of the Eighteenth Century, we arc face to 
 face with the one gi'eut artist of that age whom Watteau 
 never affected. Cliardin was the ])ainter of the hour- 
 m'oi.H'ic. \Vith a persistence just as niarkcd as that 
 of the most honicly Dutchmen, but with a refinement 
 
 of feeling to which they were generally strangers and 
 
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 which gave distinction to his treatment of his theme, 
 he devoted himself to the chronicle of prosaic virtues. 
 In his Art, no trace of the selected garden, of the 
 elegant gallantries, of the excitement of Love in 
 the gay or luscious weather. The honest townspeople 
 know hardly a break in their measured sobriety. They 
 are mothers of families ; the cares of the menage press 
 on them ; house-work has to be got through ; children 
 taught, admonished, corrected. Never before or since 
 have these scenes of the kitchen, the schoolroom, or 
 the middle-class parlour, been painted with such dignity, 
 such truth, such intimacy, and such permissible and 
 fortunate reserve. AVc see them to perfection in Char- 
 din's })rints — in the prints, I mean, that were made 
 after him, for he himself engraved never. There are 
 two other sides of his Art which the contemporary line- 
 engravings do not show. One of them is his mastery 
 of still-life — his great and exceptional nobility in the 
 treatment of it. There is just a hint of that, it is 
 true, in the delicate engi-aving of VCEconome^ and the 
 broader, richer engraving of La Pourvoyeuse ; but for 
 any real indication of it, and even that is but a partial 
 one, we must come to Jules de Goncourt's etching of 
 the Guhelet d' Argent, which suggests the luminousness, 
 the characteristic reflets, and the touchc grasse of the 
 master. The other side of Chardin's talent which 
 the engi-avings do not represent, is his later skill in 
 professed portraiture, and especially in portraiture 
 in pastel, to which the fashionable but well-merited 
 
 triumphs of Latour directed him in his old age. But 
 
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 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 the deliberate limitations of the Eighteenth Century 
 prints do not in any way invalidate the excellence, the 
 completeness even, of their performance. The collector 
 should address himself to their study. A little dili- 
 gence, a little patience, and a hundred pounds, and it 
 would not be impossible to form a collection in which 
 nothing should be wanting. I remember that I gave 
 M. Lacroix or M. Rapilly, in Paris, not more than 
 seventy-five francs an impression for pieces in extraor- 
 dinarily fine condition, and with margins almost intact. 
 Chard in went on working till he was eighty years 
 old. He enjoyed popularity, and he outlived it. 
 From 1738 to 1757, there were issued, in close suc- 
 cession, the engravings, about fifty in number, which, 
 with all their differences, and with all sorts of interest- 
 ing notes about them, M. Emanuel Rocher has con- 
 scientiously and lovingly catalogued. They were 
 published at a couple of francs or so apiece ; their 
 appearance was wont to be welcomed in little notices 
 in the Mercure de France, just as the Standard or the 
 Times to-day might applaud a new Whistler or a new 
 Frank Short ; and they hung everywhere on bourffcoi.s 
 walls. The canvases which they translated were owned, 
 some by a King of France, and some by a foreign 
 Sovereign. Little in the work of the whole century 
 h-ul greater right to popularity than the Jen dr r(h/(\ 
 with its eX(juisitc and honiely grace — Sunigue has 
 perfectly engraved it — L' Etude da Dcs.sciti, austere and 
 masterly (I>e Bas has rendereii well the figure's attitude 
 
 of ai)sorption), fj- Jivnvdkitf, with the unaffected piety, 
 
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 the simple contentment of the naiTow home, and La 
 Gouvcrnantc; with the youn^ woman's friendly cama- 
 raderie and yet solicitude for the boy who is her 
 charge. 
 
 At last Fashion shifted. Chardin was in the shade. 
 Even Diderot got tired of him ; though it was only the 
 distaste of a contemporary for an excellence too con- 
 stantly repeated — and the artist betook himself, with 
 vanished popularity, to changed labours. But the 
 vogue had lasted long enough for his method to be 
 imitated. Jeaurat tried to look at common life through 
 Chardin's glasses. But Jeaurat did not catch the senti- 
 ment of Chardin as successfully as Lancret and Pater 
 had caught the sentiment of Watteau. And along 
 with a little humour, of which the print of the Citrons 
 de Javotte affords a trace, he had some coarseness of 
 his own which assorted ill with Chardin's homely 
 but unalloyed refinement. Chardin was profound ; 
 Jeaurat, comparatively shallow. You look not with- 
 out interest at the productions of the one ; you enter 
 thoroughly into the world of the other. The creation 
 of Chardin — which his engravers pass on to us — has a 
 sense of peace, of permanence, a curious reality. 
 
 Reality is that which to us of the present day seems 
 
 above all things lacking to the laboured and obvious 
 
 moralities of Greuze, who was voluptuous when he 
 
 posed to be innocent, and was least convincing when 
 
 he sought to be moral. Yet Greuze, when he was not 
 
 the painter of the too seductive damsel, but of family 
 
 piety and family afflictions, must have spoken to his 
 
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 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 owTi time with seeming sincerity. Even a liberal 
 philosophy — the philosophy of Diderot — patted him 
 gently on the back, and invited him to reiterate his 
 commendable and salutary lessons. But the philosophy 
 was a little sentimental, or it would scarcely have con- 
 tinued to Greuze the encouragement it had withdrawn 
 from Chardin. The Greuze pictures chiefly engraved 
 in his own time were his obtinisive moralities. They 
 now find little favour. But Levasseurs print of La 
 Laitiere and Massard's of La Crudie cassce — elaborate, 
 highly wTought, and suggesting that ivory flesh texture 
 which the master obtained when he was most dex- 
 terously luxurious — these will fascinate the Sybarite, 
 legitimately, during still many generations. 
 
 Befox'c the first successes of the painter of that 
 Laitiere and that CrucJie cassee, there was flourishing 
 at Court, under the Pompadour s patronage, the " rose- 
 water Raphael,''' the " bastard of Rubens.*" This was 
 Eran(|Ois Boucher. The region of his art lay as far 
 indeed from reality as did Watteau's "enchanted isle," 
 and it had none of the rightful magnetism of that 
 country of poetic dream. It was not, like Watteau's 
 land, that of a privileged and fortunate humanity, 
 but of 
 
 " False Gods, and Muses misbej^ot." 
 
 Where Boucher tried to be refined, he was insincere ; 
 
 and where he was veracious, he was but picturesquely 
 
 gross. His notion of Olympus was that of a mounUiiii 
 
 on which ample human forms might be undraj)ed with 
 
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 impunity. That Olympus of a limited imagination he 
 frequented with industry. But, as a decorative painter, 
 there is no need to undervalue his fertility and skill, 
 his apparently inexhaustible though trivial impulse; 
 and if few of his larger compositions have deserved 
 those honours which they have obtained, of translation 
 into elaborate line-engraving, hosts of the chalk studies 
 which are so characteristic of his facile talent were 
 appropriately reproduced in fac-simile by the ingenious 
 inventions of Demarteau. These fac-similes were very 
 cheap indeed not many years ago, nor are they to-day 
 expensive. Of Bouchers more considered work, en- 
 graved in line, La Naissance de Venus, by Duflos, and 
 Jupiter et Leda, by Ryland, are important and agree- 
 able, and, as times go, by no means costly instances. 
 
 Fragonard, besides being a nobler colourist than 
 Boucher — as the silvery pinks and creamy whites of the 
 Chemise en levee, at the Louvre, would alone be enough 
 to indicate — was at once a master of more chastened 
 taste and of less impotent passion. He was of the 
 succession of the Venetians. Fragonard came to Paris 
 from the South — from amidst the olives and the flowei"s 
 of Grasse — and he retained to the end a measure of the 
 warmth and sunshine of Provence. The artistic eager- 
 ness, the huiTied excitement, of some of his work, is 
 much in accord with his often fiery themes; but in 
 V Heureuse FecondiU; Lcs Bng^iiets, and La Bonne 
 Mere (all of them engraved by De Launay) the col- 
 lector can possess himself of compositions in which 
 
 Fragonard depicted domestic life in his own lively way. 
 
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 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 That is only one side of his mind, and, like his love of 
 dignified and ordered artificial Landscape, it is little 
 known. Elsewhere he showed himself a skilled and an 
 appreciative observer of wholly secular character, and 
 he embodied upon many a canvas his conception of 
 Love — it was not to him the constant devotion of a 
 ^life, but the unhesitating tribute of an hour. Le Verre 
 (VEau and Le Pot au Lait are good gay prints, but not 
 for every one. In Le Chijfre cV Amour, Affection, which 
 with Fragonard is rarely inelegant, becomes for a moment 
 sentimental. 
 
 Contemporary with Fragonard were a group of 
 artists who, more than Fragonard, left Allegory aside, 
 and exercised their imagination only in a reaiTange- 
 ment of the real. These were the French Little 
 Masters : amongst them, Lavreince, the Saint- Aubins, 
 Raudouin, Eisen, Moreau le jeune. They had seen 
 the life of Paris — Raudouin, the debased side of it ; 
 but even Raudouin had some feeling for elegance 
 and comedy. iMsen was above all an illustrator. 
 Augustin de Saint- Aubin, a man of various talents, 
 <lisplayf(l ill little things, is studied most agreeably in 
 those two pretty and well-disposed interiors, Le Concert 
 and Ix Bid pari: They are his most j)rized pieces ; 
 and {)rettiness having often more money value than 
 greatness, they are worth more than any Watteaus — 
 they are worth full twenty |)()mii(1s the pair. And that 
 is all I can aflord to say of Augustin de Saint-Aiibin. 
 Lavreince and Moreau must be spoken of a little more 
 
 fully. 
 
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 Nicliolas Lavreince was by birth a Swede, but, 
 educated in Paris and ])ractising his art there, he was 
 more French than the French. Edniond and Jules de 
 Goncourt, the best historians of the Painting of the 
 time, do not much appreciate him : at least in compari- 
 son with Baudouin. They say that Baudouin's method 
 was larger and more artistic than Lavreince''s, whose 
 way was generally the way of somewhat painful finish. 
 I have seen by Lavreince one agi'eeable water-colour 
 which has all the impulse of the first intention, and, so 
 far, belies the De Goncourts' judgment. But the judg- 
 ment is doubtless true in the main. That does not 
 make Lavi-eince a jot less desirable for the collectors of 
 prints. Both he and Baudouin wrought to be engraved, 
 but Lavreince''s work was done with a much larger 
 measure of reference to that subsequent interpretation. 
 The true gouaches of Lavreince are of extraordinary 
 rarity ; and if their method is in some respects less 
 excellent than that of the companion-works of Bau- 
 douin, their themes are more presentable. Lavreince, 
 in his brilliant portrayal of a luxurious, free-living 
 Society, sometimes allowed himself a liberty our cen- 
 tury might resent ; but liaudouin's license — save in such 
 an exquisite subject as that of La Toilette^ which de- 
 picts the slimmest and most graceful of his models — 
 was on a par with that of lletif de la Bretonne. A 
 proof before all letters of the delightful Toilette — 
 engraved so delicately by Ponce — is worth, when it 
 appears, ten or twelve pounds : a more ordinary, a less 
 
 rare impression, is worth perhaps three or four. 
 
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 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 Baudouin — in too much of his Avork — was the por- 
 trayer of coarse intrigue in humble life and high : 
 La^Teince and Moreau, masters of polite Genre, with 
 subjects wider and more varied, the chroniclers of con- 
 versations not inevitably tete-a-tete. For vividness and 
 intellectual delicacy of expression in the individual 
 , heads, one must give the palm to Moreau. The De 
 Goncourts claim for him also pre-eminence in com- 
 position; but in one piece at least — in the AsscmhUe 
 au Coneert, engraved by Dequevauviller — Lavreince 
 runs Moreau hard. And Lavreince, I can''t help 
 thinking, has an invention scarcely less refined. What 
 can be gentler, yet what if gentle can be more abun- 
 dant comedy than his, in the Directeur des Toilettes? 
 — the scene in which a prosperous Abbe, an arbiter of 
 Taste in women's dress, dictates the choice to his de- 
 lightful friend, or busily preserves her from the chances 
 of error. And very noteworthy is Lavreince's way of 
 availing himself of all the opportunities for beautiful 
 design — beautiful line, at all events — which were af- 
 forded him by the noble interiors in which there passed 
 the action of his drama. Those interiors are of the 
 days of Louis Sei/e, and are a little more severe, a 
 little less intricate, than the interiors of Louis Quin/e. 
 Musical instruments, often l)eautiful of form — harp, 
 harpsichord, and violoncello — pl'vy their j)art in these 
 pictorial compositions. Prints from Lavreince, like 
 prints from Moreau, are too gay and loo agieeable 
 not to l)C always valued. iMiglaiid and America will 
 
 surely take to them, as France has done long ago. 
 
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 It has been claimed for jNIorcau — Moreau " le jeune," 
 to distiiiguisli liini from his less eminent brother — that 
 he is yet more exact than Lavreince is, in his record 
 of the fashions of his period in furniture and dress. 
 And sometimes, on this very account, his effect is more 
 prosaic — ^just as at the contemporary theatre the acces- 
 sories are apt to dominate or dwarf the persons of the 
 drama. Yet Moreau's people have generally some in- 
 terest of individuality and liveliness, and these charac- 
 teristics are nowhere better seen than in the two series 
 which he designed to show the life of a great lady from 
 the moment of motherhood and the daily existence of 
 a man of fashion. These prints — such as Oest un Fils, 
 Monsieur ; La Sortie de TOpera ; La Grande Toilette — 
 should be possessed, let me tell the collector, with the 
 " A. P. D. Q." still upon them : not in a later state. 
 Moreau, besides being a charming and observant 
 draughtsman, was himself a delicate engraver ; but he 
 left to others (Romanet, Baquoy, and Malbeste amongst 
 them) the business of reproducing his story of the ruling 
 classes — of the leaders of Society — and it was suffi- 
 ciently popularised. Having regard to what it was — 
 a story, to some people, of in-itating even though of 
 elegant triviality — perhaps it was as well for those 
 ruling classes of the ancien regime that it did not go 
 further — that it was not actually broadcast. Of Beau- 
 maixhais's pungent comedy the saying has since passed 
 round, that it was the Revolution "e-w action.''^ So 
 envy or contempt might surely have been fostered 
 
 by the wide- spread perusal of Moreau 's exquisite, 
 
 186
 
 FRENCH EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 unvarnished record, and the Revolution have been 
 advanced by a day. 
 
 With Moreau's art, the Eighteenth Century closes. 
 There is an end of its luxury and its amenity — an end 
 of the lover who insists and the lady who but lightly 
 forbids. There followed after it the boneless, nerveless, 
 still eminently graceful pseudo-classicism of Prud'hon, 
 and the sterner pseudo-classicism of David, which re- 
 called the ideal of men to a more strenuous life. But 
 that life was not of the Eighteenth Century. The in- 
 flexible David, like the dreamy Prud'hon, was an artist 
 for another age. The graceful, graceless Eighteenth 
 Century — with its own faults, and no less with its own 
 virtues — had said its last word. Familiar and luxu- 
 rious, tolerant and engaging, it had expressed through 
 Art the last of its so easily supported soitows and its 
 so easily forgotten loves. 
 
 187
 
 CHArrER X 
 
 The range of Turner Prints — His earlier Engravers 
 — His " Liher ISludiurimi " — Its etchings, proofs, 
 completed mezzotints — Its money value — " Liber " 
 Collectors — The "Southern Coast" Series — The 
 "England and Wales" — The " Richmondshire" Prints 
 — "Ports" and "Rivers of Ejigland" — The Turner 
 Prints secure the Master s fame. 
 
 Turner prints constitute a class apart. The prints 
 
 which others made after Turner's drawings and pictures, 
 
 the prints he executed to some extent or wholly himself, 
 
 the engravings in line and the engravings in mezzotint, 
 
 are all of them wont to be collected not so much as 
 
 part of the representation of a particular method of 
 
 work, but rather as the representation of an individual 
 
 genius and of a whole school of the most highly 
 
 skilled craftsmen. 
 
 The Turner prints range in period from a year at 
 
 least as early as 1794 to a year at least as late as 1856 — 
 
 for though Turner was then dead, one or two of the finest 
 
 engravers whom he had employed were at that date still 
 
 labouring in the pojjularisation of his pieces. They 
 
 range in size from the dainty vignette a couple of inches 
 
 high, to the extensive plate — a wonder of executive 
 
 skill, yet often, too, a wonder of misplaced ingenuity — 
 
 188
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 which mav be three feet long. Between them come 
 the very masterpieces of the landscape engraving of our 
 century — line-engravings like the "Southern Coast"; 
 mezzotint supported by etching, like the " Liber Stu- 
 diorum." They range in value between a couple of 
 shillings or so — the price, when you can get the print, 
 of a specimen of the early publications in the " Copper- 
 plate Magazine " — to, say, well shall we say to d£'50 ? 
 — the price of an exceptional proof of a fine, rare 
 subject in "Liber." In point of number, those of 
 which account may reasonably be taken by the student 
 of our greatest Landscape artist through the charming 
 medium of his prints — or if you will by the student of 
 Engraving who finds in pieces after Turner alone a 
 sufficient range of method in the illustration of Land- 
 scape — in point of number those which there need be 
 no desire to ignore or forget, reach, roundly speaking, 
 to four or five hundred. It is possible to make the 
 study and ac(juisition of them the main business of 
 the life of an intelligent collector. 
 
 Mr. W. G. Itawlinson is perhaps amongst existing 
 connoisseurs the one whose knowledge of the engravings 
 by Turner, and after him, is the widest and most exact. 
 Mr. lUiwlinson has greatly extended the sum of his 
 own knowledge since he penned that catalogue rai- 
 sonne of the " Liber Studiorum " which remains his 
 only published contribution to the history of the 
 prints of 'i'urner. The book is ol' miicli value; but 
 though, broadly considered, it nnnains an ade(|uate 
 
 and serviceai)le guide, there must bv this lime be a 
 
 180
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 good many corrections in the matter of " States " — 
 rarely is it that the issue of a First Edition of a de- 
 scriptive catalogue of engraved work does not elicit, 
 from one source or another, some information, the 
 existence of which the author had had no reason to 
 surmise. And, moreover, it may be hoped that Mr. 
 Rawlinson's more extended studies in the field of his 
 particular intjuiry will bear fruit some day in the 
 ])roduction of another volume, devoted this time to 
 the tale of the great series of Line-Engravings and 
 the less numerous productions in pure Mezzotint. 
 "Liber," remember — the master-work, which is thus 
 far the only one to have been elaborately discussed or 
 chronicled by any ci'itic — is the result of a combination 
 of Mezzotint with Etching. But we will go back a 
 little, and will take the prints — or such of them as 
 there is cause to mention — in due order. 
 
 I recollect Mr. Rawlinson saying to me, not many 
 months ago — in speaking of the little publications of 
 the " Copper-plate Magazine " and of such-like small 
 and early work — that Turner was never properly en- 
 graved till he was engraved by James Basire; and I 
 think, upon the whole, that this is true. At a later 
 period. Turner himself protested that he was never 
 properly, at all events never quite perfectly, engraved, 
 till he was engraved by John Pye — but then that 
 was for a quite different order of work from that which 
 occupied him in the first years of his skilled and accom- 
 ])lished practice. What Mr. Rawlinson meant was, 
 
 that whereas the engraver — tasteful and in a measure 
 
 190
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 delicate, yet slight and wanting wholly in subtlety of 
 realisation and treatment — who did the little prints 
 in the " Copper-plate Magazine," such as the Carlisle 
 and the WaKrJield, failed to translate into his art all 
 the really translatable qualities of the immature yet 
 interesting work to which he addressed himself, Basire, 
 in the brilliant and solid prints which served as 
 head-pieces to the " Oxford Almanacks,'"' from 1799 to 
 1811, did the most thorough justice to their mainly 
 architectural themes. It was in the year in which 
 Basire finished — and Turner's art, by this time, had, 
 of course, greatly changed — that there was executed 
 by John Pye the very work {Pope's Villa) which ex- 
 torted from Turner what it may be was his first warm 
 tribute of admiration to anybody who translated him. 
 But four years before this. Turner, with Charles Turner, 
 the engraver in mezzotint, had begun the publication 
 of the immoi-tal series of " Liber Studiorum." 
 
 The set of prints which Turner issued as his " Liber 
 Studiorum " — with an allusion, tolerably evident, to the 
 "Liber Veritatis" of Claude — is but one series of 
 several with which the English master of Landscape 
 occupied himself during the fifty years, or more, of his 
 working life. But it is the first series that was conceived 
 by him ; and it is, in the best sense, the most ambi- 
 tioas ; and it remains the noblest and the most repre- 
 sentative. In its actual execution Turner had a greater 
 hand — an inc()nij)arably greater hand — than in that 
 of any of its successors; and its scheme j)ennitted a 
 
 variety, an effective suddenness of transition, denied to 
 
 191
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 the artist when, in later years, he was depicting that 
 portion of the county of Yorks which is known as 
 Richniondshire, or the " Southern Coast," or the 
 "Rivers of France," or the "Ports of England," or 
 even all the places which it pleased him to choose for 
 one of the most elaborate of his publications, " The 
 Picturesque Views in England and Wales." A long- 
 tether was allowed him, unquestionably, in some of 
 these sets; but in the "Liber" — as it is called, briefly 
 and affectionately, by collector and student — there was 
 no question of tether at all. In it, a subject from 
 Classical Mythology might stand side by side with a 
 subject drawn from English barton and hedgerow — I 
 am, as it were, naming Procris and Ccphalus, ^sacus 
 and Hcsperie, the ex(juisite though homely Straw Yard, 
 the entirely prosaic Farm Yard with a CocJc. The 
 interior of a London church, with its Georgian altar 
 and its pews cosily curtained for the most respectable 
 of bourgeois, might be presented in near neighbour- 
 hood to some study which Turner had recorded of the 
 eternal hills, or of a great storm that gathered, rolled 
 over, and passed away from Solway Moss. 
 
 I have used the word " study," since it is Tumer''s 
 own. But each plate in " Liber Studiorum " is much 
 more than a study. It is a finished composition. Turner 
 spared neither time nor pains — though in this case, as 
 in others, he was careful, where that was possible, to 
 spare money — in making his work all that the wisest 
 lover of his genius might expect it to be. Whatever 
 
 rivalry there was with the " Liber Veritatis " of Claude, — 
 
 192
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 — the later portions of which were issuing from the 
 house of Boydell at the very moment that Turner 
 was planning the "Liber"" — the rivalry was conducted 
 upon no equal terms. I say nothing in depreciation of 
 Claude's " Liber Veritatis." In it, one of the greatest 
 practitioners of mezzotint engraving — Richard Earlom 
 ,;r— reproduced, with learned simplicity, Claude's mas- 
 terly memoranda — the sometimes slender yet always 
 stately drawings in the preparation of which Nature 
 had counted for something, and Ai't had counted for 
 more, Claude's bistre sketches, by their dignity and 
 style — even the hurried visitor to Chatsworth may 
 know that — are akin to the landscapes of Rembrandt, 
 to the studies of Titian. But the artist of the " Liber 
 Veritatis "" worked in haste, worked purposely in slight- 
 ness, and more than one generation separated him from 
 the engraver who was to execute the plates. Turner 
 worked with elaboration, and worked at leisure, and 
 he etched upon the plates, himself, the leading lines 
 of his composition, and he was in contact with the 
 engravers, and his directions to these accomplished 
 craftsmen were rightly fastidious and endlessly minute. 
 Claude too was an etcher, yet it is not in the " Liber 
 Veritatis" — it is in the rare and early States of his 
 Shc'pfurd and Shepherdess Convcrsinff, of his CoxvJicrd 
 (" Le Boiivier"), of his Cattle in Stormy WeatJicr — 
 that (as a pievioiis chapter has insisted) we are to find 
 proof of his skilled familiarity with that means of 
 expression which Turner cuiployed as the basis of his 
 
 work in the " Liber." Claude, when he etched, etched 
 
 193 N
 
 UNE PRINTS 
 
 for Etching's sake, and used with pleasure and with 
 case the resources of the etchers art. Turner restricted 
 Etching within narrower limits. When one remembers 
 the circumstance that, having etched the outlines on 
 the plate, he took a dozen or a score, perhaps, of 
 impressions from it before he caused the work in 
 mezzotint to be added, it is difficult to assert that he 
 did not attach a certain value to the etched outlines. 
 And indeed they are of extraordinary significance and 
 strength : they show economy of labour, certainty of 
 vision and of hand. It is very well that they, as well 
 as the finished plates, should be collected. But, in his 
 })leasure in possessing himself of these rare, noble 
 things, the collector must not allow himself to forget 
 that they were essentially a preparation and a susten- 
 ance for that which was to follow — for that admirable 
 mezzotint on which the subtlest lights and shadows of 
 the picture, its infinite and indescribably delicate grada- 
 tions, were intended to depend. 
 
 Of this Mezzotint it is time to speak. Its employ- 
 ment, though it proved — as I think I have implied 
 already — wonderfully conducive to the quality of the 
 "Liber" plates, was not resolved upon at first. The 
 process of aquatint, in which much work was done 
 about that time — in which, only a very few years 
 before " Liber " began. Turner's friend, Thomas Girtin, 
 had produced some broadly-treated views of Paris — 
 had, at fu'st, been thought of. Negotiations were 
 opened with Lewis, and he executed in aquatint one 
 
 of the plates, which Turner did indeed eventually use, 
 
 194
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 but which he was careful not to use in the earhest 
 numbers of the pubHcation. The superiority of Mezzo- 
 tint he recognised quite clearly. He employed the best 
 mezzotinters. He busied himself to instruct them as 
 to the effects that he desired. He learnt the art him- 
 self, and himself mezzotinted, with great exquisiteness, 
 ten out of the seventy-one plates. He worked, in later 
 stages, upon all the rest of them ; obtaining generally 
 the most refined beauty, but working in such a fashion 
 as to exhaust the plate with extravagant swiftness. 
 Then he touched and retouched, almost as Mr. Whistler 
 has touched and retouched the plates of his Venetian 
 etchings. So delicate, so evanescent, rarity is not an 
 aim, but a need, with them. 
 
 The ])ubIication of the " Liber "''' — the great under- 
 taking of the early middle period of Turner"'s art — 
 began in 1807, and its issue was arrested in the year 
 1819. It was never completed — seventy-one finished 
 plates were given to the world out of the hundred that 
 were meant to be. But Turner had by that time pro- 
 ceeded far with the remainder, of which twenty plates, 
 more or less finished, testified to a gathering rather 
 than ii lessening strength. By the non-publication 
 of these later ])!ates, the collector — if not necessarily 
 the student — is deprived of several of the noblest ilhis- 
 trations of Tumer"'s genius. Nothing in I he whole 
 series shows an elegance more dignifit-d than that which 
 the Stork and Aqueduct displays ; the mystery of dawn 
 is magnificent in i\\c Storu:1icvfi;i' ; and never was pas- 
 toral landscajje — the Englaiid of field and wood and 
 
 195
 
 FINE rillNTS 
 
 slo})iiig hillside — more engaging or suggestive than in 
 the Ci'owJuirst. 
 
 The mention of these plates — the hint it gives us as 
 to difference of subject and of aim — brings up the ques- 
 tion of the various classes of composition into which 
 Turner thought proper to divide his work. His adver- 
 tisement of the publication affords a proof of how widely 
 representative the work was intended to be ; nor, indeed, 
 did the execution at all fall short of Turner's hope in 
 this respect. The work was to be — and we know, now, 
 how fully it became — an illustration of Landscape Com- 
 position, classed as follows : " Historical, Mountainous, 
 Pastoral, Marine, and Architectural."" And further, 
 it is said in the advertisement, " Each number contains 
 five engravings in mezzotint : one subject of each class." 
 But Turner, in these matters, was extraordinarily un- 
 methodical — I should like to say "muddled." Each 
 number did contain five engravings, and they were " in 
 mezzotint," with the preparation in etching; but it 
 was by no means always that there was one subject 
 of each class, for Turner divided the Pastoral into 
 simple and what he described as " elegant " or " epic " 
 Pastoral (Mr. Roget thinks that the "E.P." means 
 "epic"), and the very first number contained a His- 
 torical, a Marine, an Architectural subject, but it 
 contained no Mountainous, for the Pastoral was re- 
 presented in both of its forms ("P." and "E.P."). 
 
 The actual publication was exceedingly irregular. 
 
 Sometimes two numbers — or two parts, as we may 
 
 better call them — were issued at once. Sometimes 
 
 196
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 there would be an interval of several years between 
 the issue of a couple of parts. There is no doubt 
 that as the work progressed Turner felt increasingly 
 the neglect under which it suffered. Gradually he 
 lost interest in its actual issue — but, never for a 
 moment in its excellence. 
 
 Charles Turner, the admirable mezzotint engraver — 
 who, it should hardly be necessary to say, was no rela- 
 tion of the gi'eater man — had charge of "Liber" in 
 its early stages. The prints of the first parts bore an 
 inscription to the effect that they were " Published by 
 C. Tui-ner, 50 Warren Street, Fitzroy Square." But 
 in 1811 — when three years had elapsed since the pub- 
 lication of the fourth part — the fifth came out as 
 " Published by Mr. Turner, Queen Anne Street, West" 
 — and " Mr. Turner " meant, of course, the author of 
 the work. Charles Turner, who had engraved in mezzo- 
 tint every plate contained in the four parts with whose 
 publication he was concerned, engi-avcd, likewise, several 
 of the succeeding pieces. Thus his share in the produc- 
 tion of "Liber" was greater than that of any of his 
 brethren. William Say's came next to his in im- 
 |)ortancc — importance measured by amount of labour 
 — and Mr. Itawlinson has pointed out that William 
 Say ^ai)proached his work with little previous prepara- 
 tion by the rendering of Landscape. The remark is, 
 in some degree, applicable to most of Say's associates. 
 The engraver in me/zotint, at that time, as in earlier 
 times, flourished chiefly by reproducing Portraiture. 
 
 Raj)hael Smith and William Ward — ^great artists who 
 
 197
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 were still living when the "Liber" was executed, but 
 who had no part in the performance — had been em- 
 ployed triumphantly, a very little earlier, in popularis- 
 ing that delightful art of Morland, in which landscape 
 had so large a place. Dunkarton, Thomas Lupton, 
 Clint, Easling, Annis, Dawe, S. W. Reynolds, and 
 Hodges complete the list of the engravers in mezzo- 
 tint who worked upon the " Liber." Admirable artists 
 many of them were, but the collector, if he is a student, 
 cannot forget how much the master, the originator, 
 dominated over all. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin and several subsequent writers have 
 written, with varying degrees of eloquence, of origin- 
 ality, and, I may add, of common sense, as to the 
 moral, emotional, or intellectual message the " Liber " 
 may be taken to convey. Tliis is scarcely the place in 
 which to seek to decipher with exliaustive thoroughness 
 a communication that is on the whole complicated and 
 on the whole mysterious. The reader may be referred 
 to the last pages of the final volume of " Modern 
 Painters" for what is at all events the most im- 
 pressive statement that a prose-poet can deliver as 
 to the gloomy significance of Turner's work. Mr. 
 Stopford Brooke — rich in sensibility and in imaginative 
 perceptiveness — follows a good deal in Mr. Ruskin''s 
 track. I doubt if Mr. Hamerton or Mr. Cosmo 
 Monkhouse — instructive critics of a cooler school — 
 endorse the verdict of unmitigated gloom, and I have 
 myself (in a chapter in a now well-nigh forgotten 
 
 essay of my youth) ventured to hold forth upon the 
 
 198
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 intervals of peace and rest which " Liber Studiorum " 
 shows in its scenes of soHtude and withdrawal : the 
 morning light, clear and serene, in the meadows below 
 Oakhampton Castle ; the graver silence of sunset as 
 one looks wstfully from heights above the Wye, to 
 where, under the endless skies, the stream deploys to 
 the river. I am referring, of course, to the Oakhampton 
 Castle subject, and to the Severn and Wye; but the 
 argument might have been sustained by allusion to 
 many another print. 
 
 More important to our present purpose than to settle 
 accurately its moral mission or to agree upon the senti- 
 ment of this or that particular plate, is it to value 
 properly the sterling and artistic virtues which " Liber " 
 makes manifest. Of these, however, there is one thing 
 only that I care to emphasise here. Let all beauties of 
 detail be discovered ; but let us even here, and in lines 
 that are of necessity brief, lay stress upon the all- 
 imj)ortant part played in the plates of "Liber"" by one 
 old-fashioned virtue, that will yet be fresh again when 
 some of those that may seem to supplant it have indeed 
 waxed old. It is the virtue of Composition. " Liber 
 Studionun" shows, in passage after j)assage of its 
 draughtsmanshij), close reference to Nature, deep know- 
 ledge of her secrets ; but it shows I think yet more the 
 unavoidable conviction, alike of true worker and true 
 connoisseur, that Nature is, for the artist, not a Deity 
 but a material : not a tyrant but a servant. In the 
 near and faithful stud^ of Nature — and nowhere more 
 
 com{)I('tcly than in the prints of "Liber" — 'l\irncr did 
 
 101)
 
 FINE rUINTS 
 
 much that had been left undone by predecessors. But 
 he was not opposed to them — he was alhed to them — 
 in his recognition of the fact that his art must do much 
 more than merely reproduce. " Nature,"" said Goethe, 
 " Nature has excellent intentions." And by Composi- 
 tion, by choice, by economy of means, sometimes by 
 very luxury of hidden labour, it is the business of the 
 artist to convey these intentions to the beholders of his 
 work. How much does he receive.'' How much of 
 himself, of his creative mind, must we exact that he 
 shall bestow ? 
 
 Let us come down, immediately, to money matters, 
 and other practical things for the collector's benefit. 
 
 It is still possible, here and there, in an auction 
 room, to buy an original set of " Liber Studiorum '^ — a 
 set, that is, as Turner issued it — but it is never desir- 
 able. For Turner, who was not only a great poet with 
 brush and pencil, and scraper and etching needle, but an 
 exceedingly keen hard bargainer and man of business, 
 took horrible care (or just care, if we choose to call it 
 so) that the original subscribers to his gi'eatest serial 
 should never get sets consisting altogether of the fine 
 impressions. He mixed the good with the second-rate : 
 the second-rate with the bad. It was not till collectors 
 took to studying the pieces for themselves, and making 
 up collections by purchase of odd pieces here and there 
 — rejecting much, accepting something — that any sets 
 were uniformly good. The first fine set, perhaps, was 
 that, in various States, which was amassed by Mr. 
 
 Stokes, and passed on to his niece, MissMai^ Constance 
 
 200
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 Clarke. To have the marks of these ownerships at the 
 back of a print, is — in ninety-nine cases out of a hun- 
 dred — to have evidence of excellence. Twenty years 
 ago, one could buy such a print, now and then, at 
 Halsted's, the ancient dealers, in Rathbone Place; 
 and have an instructive chat to boot, with an old- 
 world personage who had had speech with " Mr. 
 Turner." Even now, in an auction room, one may get 
 such a print sometimes. Another of the very early 
 collectoi-s was Sir John Hippesley, who bought origin- 
 ally on Halsted's recommendation, and who — having 
 been for years devoted to works of other masters — 
 ended by breakfasting, so to speak, on " Liber Studi- 
 crum : " on the chair opposite to him, as he sat at his 
 meal, a fine print was wont to be placed. Amongst 
 living connoisseurs, Mr. Henry Vaughan and Mr. J. E. 
 Taylor, Mr. Stopford Brooke and Mr. W. G. Rawlinson, 
 have notable collections of very varying size and import- 
 ance. Mr. Itawlinson believes much more than I do — 
 if I understand him aright — in the desirability of 
 possessing engravers'" trial proofs — in a certain late 
 stage. Most engiavcrs"' proofs are, of course, mere 
 prej)arations, curious and interesting, but in themselves 
 far less desirable than the finished plates to whose 
 effects of deliberate and attained beauty they can but 
 vaguely a|)proximate. Of course if you are so ex- 
 ceediuglv lucky a man as to have been able to pounce 
 upon the particular proof which was the last of the 
 series, you possess a fine and incontestable thing; but 
 
 generally an early ini{)ressiou of the First published 
 
 201
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 State represents the subject more safely and assuredly ; 
 and, failing that, an early impi-ession of the Second 
 State; and so on. An indication of priority is no 
 doubt well — but it is well chiefly for the feebler 
 brethren. You must train your eye. Having trained 
 it, you must learn to rely on it. Books and the 
 knowledge of States are useful, but are not sufficient. 
 
 In the few years that elapsed between the establish- 
 ment of "Liber"''' as avowedly fit material for the diligence 
 and outlay of the collector, and the great sale of the 
 " remainders "" in Turner"'s own collection — which only 
 left Queen Anne Street in 1873, some two -and -twenty 
 years after his death — prices for fine impressions of the 
 " Liber " plates, bought separately, were high. Then, 
 in 1873, during that long sale at Christie's, a flood of 
 prints, and many of them very fine ones, came upon 
 the market. " Would they ever be absorbed ? ■" it was 
 asked. They were absorbed very ((uickly. But just 
 until they were absorbed, it was, naturally, possible, 
 not only to choose (at the dealer's, chiefly, who bought 
 big lots ; at the Colnaghi's and Mrs. Noseda's, particu- 
 larly) — it was possible to choose sagaciously, out of so 
 great a number, and to choose cheaply too. Then 
 "markets hardened.'' The various writings calling 
 attention to the wisdom of collecting had probably 
 their effect. Then things slackened again. And now, 
 though rare proofs and very fine impressions — which 
 are what should be most cared about — hold their own, 
 there is a certain lull in the activity of buying. The 
 
 undesirable impression goes for very little. Yet the 
 
 202
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 fluctuations, such as they are, either way, are of no 
 vast importance. Of any but the very rarest, or very 
 finest subjects, six to twelve guineas gets a good Firet 
 State. Three to six guineas may be the price of a 
 good Second. A Third or Fourth or Fifth State 
 fetches less, unless — as in an exceptional instance, like 
 ^e Calm — it is preferable. Of all the different sub- 
 jects, the rarest is Ben Arthur. In a fine impression 
 — with the cloudland and the shadows not impenetrably 
 massive — it is exceedingly impressive. But never as a 
 thing of power should I rate it above Sohvay Moss 
 or Hind Head Hill; or, as a thing of beauty, above 
 Severn and Wye. 
 
 No great collection of the "Liber Studiorum" has 
 been sold of late years, but if we go back to the year 
 1887, we can give a few prices culled from the cata- 
 logue of the Buccleugh Sale. An engraver's proof of 
 the Woman zvith a Tambourine fetched =£'15, 15s. there ; 
 an engraver"'s proof of Basle, oC27 ; a proof of the 
 Mount St. Gothard, which at least must have had the 
 virtue of a})proaching finish, fell to Colnaghi's bid of 
 dC'oS ; the First State of the Holy Islarul Catlicdral, 
 which sold for i?3, 3s., must either have been poor or 
 monstrously cheap, though the plate is one in which, 
 even to the collector with the most trained eye, the 
 possession of the First State is not strictly necessitated : 
 the .subject is among those — and they are not so very 
 few — in wliich the Second State, well chosen, is alto- 
 gether julequate. The First State of the Hind Head 
 
 Hill reached X'14, 14s. ; the First of the London from 
 
 203
 
 FINE I'RINTS 
 
 Grecnroich, with its noble panorama of tlie long 
 stretched Town and winding river, reached £15, 15s. 
 A proof of the Windrmll and Lock reached £^\ ; a 
 First State of the Severn and Wye, £^\ ; a First State 
 of the Procris and Cephalus, £11; a First State of the 
 Watercress Gatherers, £W, lis. The pure etchings, 
 which I have written of in an earlier paragraph in this 
 chapter, sell, generally speaking, for three or four 
 guineas apiece ; the etching of the Isis, which is ex- 
 tremely rare, fetched at the Buccleugh auction £\^, 13s. 
 By the Fine Art Society £1^ Avas paid for a First 
 State of the Ben Arthur. The plates least eagerly 
 sought, or in inferior condition, went for all sorts of 
 prices between a pound or two and four or five guineas. 
 I think, as far as value may be judged without the 
 presence of the particular impressions which were sold, 
 the little list I have now given above may fairly indi- 
 cate it, but no quite thorough indication can be got 
 without an immense accumulation of detail, and, on 
 the reader\s part, an immense knowledge in inter- 
 preting it. It is not unintentionally that we have 
 lingered long over the "Liber.'" But more than one 
 other great series must engage at all events a brief 
 attention. 
 
 In 1814 began the amous "Southern Coast" series, 
 which was brought to an end in 1827. For these 
 })rints, engraved in admirable and masculine "line," 
 chiefly by the brothers George and William Cooke, 
 Turner had made water colours, whilst as a preparation 
 
 for the " Liber," he had made but slight though finely 
 
 204
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 considered sepia drawings — mere guides and hints to 
 himself and the engravers he employed upon the plates : 
 things whose significance was to be enlarged : not 
 things to be merely copied and scrupulously kept to. 
 In quite tolerable condition the ordinary impressions 
 of the " Southern Coast " plates are to be had in large 
 J)ook-form; but the collector, buying single piece by 
 single piece, at one or two or three guineas each, seeks 
 generally impressions before letters or with the scratched 
 title. Of course the variations in condition are notice- 
 able, but in the firm " line " of the " Southern Coast," 
 they are at least much less noticeable than in the 
 delicate and evanescent mezzotints of " Liber." 
 
 The year in which the publication of the " Southern 
 Coast" was finished — when prints picturesque and 
 vivid, and in some cases, as in the Clovelly of William 
 Miller, perfectly exquisite, had been presented of the 
 most interesting seaboard places between Minehead and 
 Whitstable — that year was the period at which the 
 publication of the third great series, the " England and 
 Wales," was begun. It was to have extended to thirty 
 parts or more : each part containing four subjects. 
 JJut, like "Liber," it received, on its first issue, no full 
 and satisfying measure of encouragement, and thougli 
 it reached its twenty-fourth part, it did not go further. 
 It was ])ublishe(l at about two guineas and a half a 
 j>art. " I^nglaiKJ und Wales" sets forth with gi'cat 
 elaboration of line engi-aving the characteristics of the 
 later middle |)criod of Turner's art, so far as black and 
 
 white can set it forth at all. That wa.s the period in 
 
 205
 
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 which subject was most complicated and most ample — 
 even unduly ample — and in which Turner dealt at once 
 with the most intricate line and with all sorts of prob- 
 lems of colour, atmosphere, illumination. The work of 
 all that period, from 1827, say, to ten years onwards 
 — with many of its merits, its inevitable shortcomings, 
 and its immense ambition — the " England and Wales " 
 represents. The work of various engravers trained by 
 Turner for the interpretation of all that was most com- 
 plicated, it will ever be interesting and valuable. Such 
 prints as Stamford, Llantliony Abbey, and the noble 
 Yarmouth stand ever in the front line. The last, like 
 the Clovelhj of the " Southern Coast,"" is a work of 
 William Miller, the old Quaker engraver, whose render- 
 ing of Turners delicate skies no other line engraver 
 has approached — not even William Cooke, who did so 
 well that troop of light little wind clouds in the Mar- 
 gate of the " Southern Coast."" Admirable then, indeed, 
 many of these things must be allowed to be; and in 
 this sense they are almost unique, that scarcely any- 
 thing else has possessed their qualities. Yet on the 
 whole one admires " England and Wales " with reserva- 
 tions. One''s heart goes out more thoroughly to " Liber "" 
 and to " Southern Coast."" 
 
 There are other series which must not be passed over 
 altogether — the " llichmondshire Set,"" of which the 
 first print was executed, I think, in 1820, though the 
 whole volume was not issued till 1823. It too is in 
 line : the finest print of all, perhaps the Ingleborcnigh. 
 
 Then there are six " Ports of England : "" impressive, 
 
 206
 
 TURNER PRINTS 
 
 varied little mezzotints, unsupported by etching — prints 
 in one of which Turner has set down, for all time, his 
 clear, unequalled perception of the beauty of the Scar- 
 borouirh coast-line. Then there are the "Rivers of 
 England,"" with the noble Arundel, the restful Totness. 
 Then there are, in line, the almost over-dainty yet 
 jniraculous little prints of " Rivers of France."" Then 
 there are the wonderful vignettes in illustration of 
 Walter Scott. These, like the illustrations to the 
 Rogers' " Poems "'"' and the " Italy,"'"' with which they 
 have the most affinity, are luminous and gem-like. 
 The Rogers illustrations of course deteriorate in later 
 editions; the "Italy" of 1830 and the "Poems" of 
 1834 are the ones that should be possessed ; and were 
 the present volume of a wider scope and addressed to 
 the book-collector, I should allow myself to say here 
 what it seems I do say here, without "allowing my- 
 self"" — that the collector should get, if possible, a 
 copy in the original boards, and may give £6 for 
 that as safely as a couple of sovereigns for a re-bound 
 copy. 
 
 Turner is represented on many a side by the engraver's 
 art, and in most cases with singular good fortune. For 
 some, there are the vignettes which have the finish of 
 Cellini work. I'or some, it may he, the large, more 
 recent plates, the Modern It(dij and Ancient Itttlij, that 
 hang, I cannot help considering, rather ineffectively 
 upon liie wall : too big, woi for their place, but for 
 their method of execution — and yet, like so many, 
 
 wonderful. He is represented best of all perhai)s in 
 
 207
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 works of middle saile — in the virile line of the 
 " Southern Coast," and the unap])roachahle mezzotint 
 and etching of the " Liber." If everything that he has 
 wrought with brush or pencil were extinguished, these 
 things, living, would make immortal his fame. 
 
 208
 
 CHAl^ER XI 
 
 The healthij appreciation of Mezzotint — Its faculty of 
 conveying the painter' s^very touch — Landscape Scenes 
 in Mezzotint — Comparative Rarity of Landscapes — 
 The Constables — Vast volume of Rare Pieces and 
 Portraits — The Ptints after Sir Joshua Reytiolds — 
 Dr. Hamilton's Catalogue — The smaller number of 
 Gainsboroug/is — Increased appreciation of Romney 
 — Mr. Percy Home's book on these me?i — George 
 Morland — The cost of Mezzotints now, and when first 
 issued. 
 
 Of modem fashions in Print Collecting, the apprecia- 
 tion of Mezzotints is assuredly one of the healthiest, 
 and — apart from the question of the very high prices 
 to which mezzotints have lately been forced — there is 
 only one drawback to the pleasure of the Collector in 
 hriiiirin"- them to<rether : the collector of mezzotints has 
 to resign himself to do without original work. Tlie 
 scraping of the plate in these broad masses of sluulow 
 and light — a method innnensely popular as means of in- 
 teq)retation or translation of the j)ainter\s touch — has 
 from the days of the invention of the process by Ludwig 
 von Siegen to the days of its latest practice, never greatly 
 commended itself to the original artist as a method for 
 fresh design. 'I'lierc- are a i'ltv/ exquisite exceptions; 
 
 and i)erliaps there is no suiricient reason why there 
 
 9M) o
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 should not be more; but the exceptions best known, 
 and most likely to be cited, the prints of Turner''s 
 " Liber Stiuliorum,"' are exceptions only in so far as 
 regards that small j)roportion of the whole — about ten 
 amongst the published plates — wi'ought by Turner 
 himself. 
 
 And, further, the collector, if he cares much for 
 Landscape subjects, will note that landscapes in mezzo- 
 tint are comparatively few. It was in the Eighteenth 
 Century that the production of mezzotint was most 
 voluminous; and the Eighteenth Century took little 
 interest in Landscape. In the earlier half of our own 
 lentury — ere yet the art had almost ceased to be prac- 
 tised — the world was given a few famous sets of land- 
 scapes in mezzotint ; but they were very few. Turner's 
 "Liber" (with its backbone of etching) was followed by 
 the half-dozen pieces of the " Ports of England," and 
 by " Rivers of England," or " River Scenery," as it 
 is sometimes called, " after Turner and Girtin ; " and 
 then, well in the middle of the half-century, we were 
 endowed with the delightful, now highly prized mezzo- 
 tints, which were executed by David Lucas after the 
 works of Constable, homely when they were sombre, 
 homely too when they were most sparkling and alive. 
 They too — like the " Liber " prints of Turner — profited 
 by the supervision of the creative artist. The tendency 
 of Mr. Lucas was to make them too black, and per- 
 haps a little too massive. Sparkle and vivacity were 
 wanted in any adequate renderings of Constable ; and 
 
 these, by Constable's own solicitude, and doubtless too 
 
 210
 
 MEZZOTINTS 
 
 by the adaptability of Lucas's talent, were eventually 
 obtained. In our own day, several most meritorious 
 artists — Wehrschniidt and Gerald Robinson and others 
 — ^have done, in several branches, accomplished and 
 interesting work in mezzotint, and Frank Short, in 
 one print especially that I have in my mind after a 
 ^Turner drawing — an Alpine subject — and again in a 
 bold decisive mezzotint, A Road in Yorkshire, after 
 Dewint (a road skirting the moors) — is altogether 
 admirable. And, to name yet a third instance of the 
 art of this so flexible and extraordinarily sympathetic 
 translator, there is the quite wonderful little vision of 
 the silvery grey Downs, after a sketch by Constable in 
 the possession of Mr. Henry Vaughan, whose greater 
 Constable, the Hay Wain, was generously made over 
 to the nation, many yeare ago. The work of David 
 Lucas, done under Constable"'s eye, never — not even 
 in the radiant Summerland or in the steel-grey keen- 
 ness of the Spring — for one moment excelled in 
 delicacy of mani})ulation Frank Short's delightful 
 rendering of that vision of the Downs. But I am 
 not to dwell longer upon ])articular instances. We 
 are brought back to a repetition of the fact that it 
 is not, generally speaking, in examples of Landscape 
 Art that the collector of mezzotints nuist (ind himself 
 richest. The mezzotint collector's gi-oups of landscapes 
 will be limited. In the collection of religious coi)i])osi- 
 tions, oi genre pieces, of theatrical subjects, of "fancy" 
 subjects — in which that which is most "fancied" is the 
 
 prettiness of the female sex — in sporting and in racing 
 
 211
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 subjects (amongst the latter there are a few most 
 admirable prints after George Stubbs), and most of 
 all, of course, in portraits, from the days of Lely to 
 the days of Lawrence, there will be opportunities of 
 filling portfolio after ])ortfolio, drawer after drawer. 
 
 It is difficult, I think, for the collector — still more 
 for the student who has not a collector''s practical in- 
 terest in the matter — to realise what is actually the 
 extent of that contribution to the worWs possessions 
 in the way of Art, which has been made, and all within 
 about two hundred years, by the engravers in mezzo- 
 tint. Some eighteen years ago, an Irish amateur, Mr. 
 Challoner Smith, began the publication of a Catalogue 
 which when it was concluded, several years later, had 
 extended to five volumes. It was a colossal labour. 
 Styled by its compiler, " British Mezzotint Portraits," 
 it really includes the chi'onicle of many things which 
 at least are not professedly portraits — yet it excludes 
 many too. Whatever it excludes, its bulk is such, that, 
 amongst the mass of its matter, it comprises full de- 
 scriptions of between four and five hundred plates by 
 one artist alone. The man is Faber, junior. Fifty 
 plates are chronicled by an engraver more modern of 
 character, more popular to-day — Richard Earlom ; 
 amongst them, more than one of the genre or in- 
 cident pictures after Wright of Derby (in which a 
 difficult effect of chiaroscuro — an effect of artificial 
 light — is treated boldly, vigorously, not always very 
 subtly), and the marvellously painter-like plates of 
 
 Marriage a la Mode, so much more pictorial than the 
 
 212
 
 MEZZOTINTS 
 
 brilliant line-eng-ravinors executed much earlier after 
 those subjects. But not, be it observed, mentioned by 
 Challoner Smith amongst the Earloms, are two other 
 prints in which, in the reproduction of still-life, engi'av- 
 ing in mezzotint reaches high-water mark : I mean the 
 now most justly sought-for plates after the Fruit and 
 Flower Pieces of Van Huysum. By James Watson, a 
 contemporary of Earlom\s, more or less, about a hun- 
 dred and sixty prints are described. By J. R. Smith — 
 who engraved so many of the finest of the Sir Joshuas 
 — there are described two hundred, but by the John 
 Smith who, a century earlier, recorded almost in- 
 numerable Knellers, there are all but three hundred. 
 The difference in the number of plates produced by 
 the younger men and by the elder — James Watson, 
 Earlom, and J. R. Smith upon the one hand ; John 
 Smith and Faber on the other — finds its explanation 
 in the tendency of mezzotint to become more elaborate, 
 more refined, more perfect, presumably slower, during 
 the hundred years or so that separated the beginning, 
 not from the end indeed (for the end, strictly speak- 
 ing, is not yet), but from the very crown and crest of 
 the achievement. IVIuih of the early work is very 
 vigorous. .Jolm Smith, especially, was within limited 
 lines a sterling artist ; though mainly, like the portrait 
 j)ainters that he worke<l after, without obvious attrac- 
 tiveness and indeed without subtlety. The exceedingly 
 rare cxa!nj)lcs of Ludwig von Siegen and of Prince 
 Rupert show that these men — at the very beginning 
 
 even — were artists and not bunglers. But when one 
 
 213
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 compai-es that early work, Jolm Smith's even — done, 
 all of it, when the art was but in its robust childhood 
 — with the infinitely more refined and flexible per- 
 formance of the men of the Eighteenth Century, one 
 wonders only at the great body of achievement, dex- 
 terous, delicate, faultlessly graceful, vouchsafed to the 
 practitioners of mezzotint during the last decades of 
 that later epoch. And between the distinctly later 
 work and the distinctly earlier, of the less engaging 
 executants, there came, be it remembered, the mascu- 
 line art of M'Ardell, a link in the chain ; for M'Ardell 
 learnt something from the early men, and was the 
 master of more than one of the more recent. He is 
 admirable especially in his rendering of the portraits 
 of men. 
 
 A vast proportion of the work of the first practi- 
 tioners of Mezzotint appeals rather to the collector of 
 portraits for likeness' sake, than to the collector of 
 prints for beauty's sake and Art's. Such a collector 
 is a specialist the nature of whose specialty obliges 
 him to amass a certain amount of artistic production 
 without necessarily having any gi'eat regard for the 
 Art that is in it. We are not concerned, in this 
 volume, with his specialty, honourable and service- 
 able as it may be — a book which, by reason of more 
 pressing claims, leaves out of consideration the manly 
 and yet highly refined labours of Nanteuil, Edelinck, the 
 Drevets (masters of reproductive work in pure " line "), 
 may well be pardoned if it does not pause over mere 
 
 portraiture — I mean, the less artistic portraiture — in 
 
 214
 
 MEZZOTINTS 
 
 mezzotint. The collector who is as yet but a beginner 
 should be encouraged to direct his eye to the more 
 statedly and purposely artistic — to the hill-tops where 
 he will find already, as his comrades in research, those 
 who have brought to the task of collectino^ a lona: 
 experience and a chastened taste. In other words, the 
 generation of Reynolds and of Gainsborough, or else 
 the generation of Romney and of Morland, has to be 
 reached before the mezzotint collector can lay hands 
 on the great prizes of his pursuit. The perfectly trans- 
 lated art of these paintei'S is amongst the few things 
 which may be accounted popular and yet may be 
 accounted noble. 
 
 In saying this, I do not preclude myself from saying 
 also that I think the sums given at present for the most 
 favourite instances of mezzotint engraving are distinctlv 
 excessive. We will look at a few of them in detail, on 
 a later page. Fashion knows little reasonableness — but 
 little moderation — and hence it is that a translation 
 of Reynolds, gracious and engaging, commands, if it 
 happens to be at all rare, the price, and often more 
 than the price, of an original and important creation 
 of Dlirer's, or even of Rembrandt's. Rut what shall 
 we .say when we have to recollect that, at the present 
 moment, even the mezzotints after Ilopjmer are ridicu- 
 lously dear ! 
 
 Of all the masters of the Eighteenth or early Nine- 
 teenth Century, it is Sir Joshua Reynolds who has 
 been engraved most amply. It is safe to say that 
 
 there are something like four hundred ])rints after 
 
 215
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 his painted work — prints of the great time, I mean, 
 ending not later than 18^0, and taking, amongst 
 others, no account of the smaller plates of which S, 
 W. Reynolds executed so many. The latest and best 
 Catalogue of these great Reynolds prints is that of 
 Dr. Hamilton — a labour of diligence and loving care 
 imdertaken in our own generation. Of the painters 
 of the British School, Morland probably comes next 
 to Reynolds, in respect of the number of engravings 
 executed after his work. Apart from prints in stipple, 
 there exist after IVIorland something like two hundred 
 mezzotints. A systematic Catalogue, with states and 
 all, is still to be desired, as a sm-e practical guide to 
 the collector of Morland ; but meanwhile useful service 
 has certainly been rendered by the Exhibitions at the 
 Messrs. Vokins's, for these' were wonderfully com- 
 prehensive, and with them careful lists — only just 
 short of being catalogues raisonnls — have been issued. 
 AVilliam Ward — Morland"'s brother-in-law — and J. R. 
 Smith, with whom lie was associated, were his two 
 principal engravers; but many another accomplished 
 craftsman had a hand in popularising his labours by 
 reproducing his themes — amongst them John Young, 
 the author of the rare and little known, and poetic 
 plate, Travellers} Mr. Percy Home — himself, like Dr. 
 Hamilton, a well-known collector — has done for Gains- 
 borough and Romney what Dr. Hamilton has done 
 for Sir Joshua. In one volume, chai-mingly illustrated 
 with a few specimen subjects, Mr. Percy Home has 
 
 issued a Catalogue of the engraved portraits and fancy 
 
 216
 
 MEZZOTINTS 
 
 subjects painted by Gainsborough and by Romney — 
 the Gainsborough pieces of which he has taken note 
 having been pubhshed between 1760 and 1820 ; the 
 Romneys, between 1770 and 1830. By Gainsborough, 
 there are eighty-eight, of which seventy-seven are por- 
 traits. The numbers include some in stipple and a few 
 even in line, but the bulk are, of course, mezzotints. 
 Bv Romney — somehow more popular with the en- 
 gravers, and, it would seem, with the public — there 
 are no less than a hundred and forty-five, of which a 
 hundred and thirty-six are portraits. But it is diffi- 
 cult, in this matter, to tlraw the line very sharply, 
 owing to the habit of the beauties of that day to be 
 painted not only as themselves, but "as Miranda,'" 
 " a.s Sensibility,"" and the like. Mr. Home himself re- 
 minds us, by cross references in his index, that even 
 of the few Ronmcys which he has chosen to cata- 
 logue as " fancy subjects," some are in truth portraits. 
 Among the engi'aved Romney portraits, no less than 
 twenty are avowed representations of the fascinating 
 woman who inspired Romney as did no other soul, 
 and without whose presence he not seldom pined. 
 She came to him fii-st as Emma Hart, or Enuiui Lyon, 
 mi.stre.ss of Charles Greville. He knew her afterwards 
 JLS the wife of Sir Williiim Hamilton. The modilicd 
 and unforbidding (Classicism of her beauty accorded 
 well with his ideal — helped j)erhaps to form it — and, 
 juliniral)lc as is much of I he work of his in which she 
 had no place, Roiniuv is most completely Romney 
 
 when it is I^ulv Hamilton hv. is recording. 
 
 217
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 The value of an average Roniney print is to-day 
 at least as high as that of an average Reynolds, and 
 much liighcr than that of an average Gainshorough. 
 An exceptional print like his Mrs. Carwardine, than 
 which notliing is finer — a well-built gentlewoman, seen 
 in profile, in close white cap, her head bent prettily 
 over a nestling child, and her arms clasped at his 
 back — sells for about a hundred guineas, and, in a 
 fine impression, is scarcely likely to fetch less. It was 
 engraved by J. R. Smith in 1781. Very beautiful 
 and delicate, though not perhaps so extremely rare, 
 is the EUzaheth, Countess of Derby, engraved by John 
 Dean. Two hundred pounds has been fetched by 
 Raphael Smith's engraving of Romney^s Lady War- 
 wick. Of Gainsboroughs, perhaps the very finest is 
 one engraved by Dean; this is the Mrs. Elliot, a 
 print of 1779 ; a very great rarity ; a thing of delight- 
 ful and dignified l)eauty, and in its exquisite delicacy, 
 quite as characteristic of the engraver as of the origi- 
 nal artist. It is a long time since any impression has 
 been sold. About £10 was the last chronicled price 
 for it. It would fetch more, so experts think, did it 
 reappear to-day. 
 
 The highest price ever yet paid for a print after 
 
 Sir Joshua is, as I am told, i?350 ; and this was given 
 
 for an impression of Thomas Watson's print after the 
 
 picture sometimes called " An Offering to Hymen " — 
 
 the Hon. Mrs. Beresford, with the Marchioness Towns- 
 
 hend mid the Hon. Mrs. Gardiner. For a while, the 
 
 Ladies Waldegrave, engraved by Valentine Green, was 
 
 218
 
 MEZZOTINTS 
 
 considered at the top of the tree. a£'270 has been cheer- 
 fully paid for it. Mr. Urban Noseda — than whom 
 no dealer in England is a greater specialist in mezzo- 
 tint, for he has inherited, it seems, his mother's eye — 
 the eye which made that lady so desirable a friend to 
 the collector, a quarter of a century ago — Mr. Urban 
 .Noseda (if I can get somehow to the end of a sentence 
 so involved and awkward that I am beginning to feel 
 it must necessarily be very clever too) tells me, from 
 Notes to which he has had access, that the original 
 price of even the most important of these Sir Joshua 
 prints was never more than a guinea and a half, and 
 that not a few were issued at five shillings. 
 
 The Morland prices still seem moderate when com- 
 jiared with those of average Sir Joshuas : actually 
 cheap when compared with those that are finest and 
 rarest. Lately, the charming pair, A Vint to the Child 
 at Nurse and A Visit to the Child at School, fetched, 
 at Sotheby's, twenty-seven guineas ; the Farmer's Stable 
 fetched, at the Iluth Sale, <i?ll, 10s.; the Carrier's 
 Stable, not long since at Christie's, fetched twenty- 
 one guineas ; Fislicrman ffohtff out, by S. W, Rey- 
 nolds, has realised £11 ; The Story of Letilia, a small 
 set, has realised X''50, but would to-day fetch more — 
 in fine condition. Mr. Noseda says — and I suppose 
 those other great authorities on mezzotint, Messrs. 
 Colnaghi, would coulirui him — that the original j)rices 
 of the Morlands ranged from seven and sixpence to 
 a guinea. Great as the diHerence is between the 
 
 .sum fii*st i*.sked and the sum uow obtained, I cannot, 
 
 219
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 in the case of this so genial, graceful, acceptable, 
 observant master, think it is excessive. A generation 
 that has gone a little mad over J. F. Millet and other 
 interesting French rustic painters, may allow itself some 
 healthy enthusiasm when George Morland is to the 
 front. 
 
 220
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Lithography, the convenient invention of Senefelder 
 — Its recent Revival due to ike French and Whistler — 
 Fantin — Whistler's Lithographs only inferior to hit 
 Etchings — C. H. Shanno7is Lithographs the best ex- 
 pression of his art — Lithography and Etching compared 
 — J\ ill Rothenstein — The Lithograp/is of Roussel — 
 Otiier Draughtsmen on Stone or Transfer -Paper — 
 The Modem Lithograph foolishly costly. 
 
 A FINAL chapter I devote to another of the most justi- 
 fiable and reasonable of the more recent fads in Print 
 Collecting — to a branch of the collector's pursuit far 
 less important, indeed, and far less interesting than 
 Etching, far less historic than Mezzotint, but far more 
 creditable than the mania of the inartistic for the 
 pretty ineptitude of the coloured print. I am speak- 
 ing of Lithography. 
 
 Men who are familiar with the later development of 
 artistic work, know that not exactly alongside of the 
 very real and admirable Revival of Etching, but closely 
 following behind it, there has proceeded some renewal 
 of interest in the art of drawing upon stone, which, in 
 1790, wjis invented by Senefelder. Often, however, 
 nowadays, it is not literally "on stone."" Without 
 defending the change — and yet without the possibility 
 of violently accusing it, seeing the achievements which
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 at least it has not forbidden — I may note that, as a 
 matter of fact, a transfer-paper, and not the prepared 
 stone, is, very frequently in our day, the substance 
 actually drawn on. 
 
 Well, the renewal of interest in the art of Lithog- 
 raphy owes something to the Frenchmen of the pre- 
 sent generation, and something too to Mr, Whistler. 
 I say "the present generation" in talking of the 
 French, because (not to speak of the qualities obtained 
 two generations ago by our English Prout), Gavarni's 
 "velvety quality" and the "fever and freedom of 
 Daumier" were noticeable and might have been in- 
 fluential before the days of our present young men. 
 The work of Fantin-Latour, one may take it, has been 
 to them an example, and, yet later, the work of 
 Whistler. Fantin-Latour — that delightful painter of 
 flowers and of the poetic nude — has endowed us in 
 I^ithography as well, with reveries of the nude, or of 
 the slightly robed. They are all done in freely scraped 
 crayon. A few of them — such as The Genius of Music, 
 or the quite recent To Stendhal — the collector of the 
 lithograph should certainly possess. But I must turn, 
 in detail, to Mr. Whistler. 
 
 Mr. Tom Way, who knows as much about Lithog- 
 raphy as any one — and more, perhaps, than any 
 one about the lithographs of Whistler — assured me, 
 a year since, that something like a hundred drawings 
 on the stone, or transfer-paper (for Mr. Whistler 
 sometimes uses the one and sometimes the other), had 
 
 been wrought by one whose reputation is secure as 
 
 222
 
 LITHOGRAPHS 
 
 the master-etcher, of our time. Since then Mr. Way 
 has accurately and eulogistically catalogued them. 
 They amount now, or did when Mr. Way finished 
 his catalogue, to exactly a hundred and thirty. But 
 Mr. Whistler is always working. Let us recall a few 
 of them — and most, though indeed by no means all, 
 ,of them have been seen in an exhibition held scarcely 
 a year ago in the rooms of the Fine Art Society. 
 Before then, they were wont to be shown privately 
 by one or two dealers. Earlier still, they were not 
 shown at all, though a few of the finest of them had 
 been long ago wrought. There was that most dis- 
 tinguished drawing that was published for a penny 
 in the Whirhc'ind — the lady seated, with a hat on, 
 and one arm pendant. It is called Tlw Whig-ed Hat. 
 As in Mr. Whistler's rare little etching of the slightly- 
 draped cross-kneed girl stooping over a baby, one 
 enjoys, in The Winged Hat, the suggestion of delicate 
 tone on the whole surface : the working of the face is 
 particularly noteworthy by reason of the subtle way 
 in which the draughtsman had suggested, by means 
 of the handling of his chalk, a different texture. "By 
 means of the handling of his chalk," did I write.? — 
 perhaps a little too confidently. One can't quite 
 .say how \\v did really get it. But he has got it, 
 .somehow. 
 
 Then th(;rc is tjiut admirable portfolio, of only six or 
 so, the Goupils piiblislied — containing the IJmchoiiMi\ 
 mysterious and weird, and a Nocturne, liuttersea, wholly 
 
 cxcjuisite. Again, there is the Butter.sca liridg-e, of 
 
 22.'J
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 1878, which, good though it is, does not stand com- 
 parison with Mr. Whistler\s etchings of the same and 
 similar themes. Then there is the rare subject which 
 people learned in Lithography are wont to account 
 almost if not quite the Whistlerian masterpiece in the 
 method — a drawing tenderly washed : a thing of masses 
 and broad spaces, more than nan'ow lines. It is called 
 Early Morning, and is a vision of the River at Batter- 
 sea. It is faint — faint — of gradations the most delicate, 
 of contrasts the least striking — a gleam of silver and 
 white. 
 
 Later, among many others, there have been that 
 drawing of a draped model seated which appeared in 
 M. Marty's " L'Estampe Originale ; " the^/i portrait of 
 M. Mallarme — a writer so difficult to understand that 
 by the faithful and by the outsider his profundity is 
 taken for gi-anted — the interesting and clever print, The 
 Doctor, which adorns the " Pageant ; " the Belle Dame 
 paresseuse, with, most especially it may be, the quality 
 of a chalk drawing; the Belle Jardiniere, which has 
 something, but by no means all of the infinite freedom 
 of the etching of The Garden; again. The Balcony 
 with people peering down from it, as if at a proces- 
 sion — and procession indeed it was, since the thing was 
 wrought on the day of Carnot's funeral. Then, in the 
 Forge and The Smith of the Place du Dragon there is 
 the tender soft grey quality which people learned in 
 these things conceive, I think generally, to be impos- 
 sible to " transfer." 
 
 But of the younger artists who have worked in 
 
 224
 
 LITHOGRAPHS 
 
 Lithogi'aphy it is time to say something. Mr. Frank 
 Short, with his placid dream of Putney, with the 
 intricate rhythm of line of his Timhcr-Slups, Yarmouth, 
 should not be passed by. Nor Mr. Francis Bate, who, 
 to draw as he has drawn, and see as he has seen, The 
 Whiting- Mill, could not possibly have been wanting in 
 originality of expression or of sight. Nor Mr. George 
 Clausen, again, whose Hay Barn bears witness not only 
 to his easy command of technique, but to his flexibility. 
 It is one of those treatments of rustic life in which 
 IVIr. Clausen has been wont to show the influence of 
 Millet, if not of Bastien Lepage. It is of a realism 
 artistically subdued, yet undeniable. Of the work of 
 C. H. Shannon I must speak a good deal more fully, for 
 of C. H. Shannon, Lithography is the particular art. 
 He is no beginner at Lithography : no maker of first 
 experiments. I do not know that he — like Mr. Short 
 — is an engi-aver in any way. He is not, like Mr. 
 Whistler, celebrated on two continents as etcher and 
 painter to boot. He is above all things draughtsman 
 — draughtsman poetic and subtle. The air of Litho- 
 graphy he breathes a.s his native air. 
 
 C. H. Shannon's art it is by no means easy for the 
 healthy normal person to aj)preciatc at once. It is 
 possii)le even for a student of the matter to lose 
 sight of Shannon's poetry and sensitiveness, in a fit of 
 impatience because the anatomy of his figures does 
 not always seem to be true, or because his sentiment 
 has not robustness. I have a lurking suspicion that I 
 
 w£is myself rather slow to apj)reciate him. Few people's 
 
 225 P
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 appreciation of the original in Art, comes to them all 
 at once. And touchy folk — unreasonable, almost irre- 
 sponsible — are apt to blame one on this account. One 
 has " swallowed one's words," they say — because one 
 has modified an opinion. The world, even the intelli- 
 gent world, they querulously gi'umble, was not ready 
 to receive them. Is that so very amazing .? Them- 
 selves, doubtless, were born with every faculty matured 
 — they possessed, upon their mother's breasts, a nice 
 discrimination of the virtues of Lafitte of '69. Some 
 of us, under such circumstances, can but crave their 
 tolerance — we were born duller. 
 
 Of lithographic technique^ Mr. C. H. Shannon — to 
 go back to him, after an inexcusable digression — is a 
 master ; and here let it be said that not only does he 
 draw upon the stone invariably, whilst Mr. Whistler 
 (it has been named before) sometimes does and some- 
 times does not draw on it, but he insists also upon 
 printing his own impressions. He has a press ; he is 
 an enthusiast ; he sees the thing through. The precise 
 number of his lithographs it is not important to know. 
 What is important, is to insist upon the relative 
 " considerableness " of nearly all of them. With him 
 the thoroughly considered composition takes the place 
 of the dainty sketch. Faulty the works of Charles 
 Shannon may be, in certain points ; deficient in cer- 
 tain points ; but rarely indeed are they slight, either 
 in conception or execution. Of each one of them may 
 it be said that it is a serious work : the seriousness 
 
 as apparent in the more or less realistic treatment 
 
 226
 
 LITHOGRAPHS 
 
 of The ModeUer as in Delia, ideal and opulent and 
 Titianesque. The Ministrants, of 1894, is perhaps his 
 most important. AMiat is more exquisite than the 
 just suggested movements of The Sisters P Sea-Breezes 
 is noteworthy, of course, in composition, and refined, 
 of course, in effect. 
 
 , Before I go on to discuss a few others of the modern 
 men, it may be more interesting to remind the reader — 
 it may be, even to inform him — what is and what may 
 hope to be Lithographv^s place. In such signs of its 
 revival as are now apparent, he will surely rejoice. 
 One does rejoice to find an artist equipped with some 
 new medium of expression — some medium of expression, 
 at all events, by which his work, while remaining auto- 
 graphic, may yet be widely diffused. And the art or 
 craft of Lithography, whatever it does not do, does at 
 least enable the expert in it to produce and scatter 
 broadcast, by the hundred or the thousand if he 
 choose, work which shall have all or nearly all the 
 quality of a pencil or chalk drawing, or, if it is desired, 
 much of the (juality even of a drawing that is washed. 
 This is excellent ; and then again there is the com- 
 mercial advantage of relatively rapid and quite inex- 
 pensive printing. But what the serious and impartial 
 amateur and collector of Fine Art will have to notice 
 on the other side, is, first of all, that Lithography 
 is not richly endowed with a scf)arate quality of its 
 own. With work that is printed from a metal plate, 
 this is quite otherwise. Mezzotint ha,s a charm that is 
 
 its own, entirely. And Line-Engraving has the par- 
 
 227
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 ticular charm of Line-Engraving. And Etching — the 
 biting, which gives vigour now, and now extreme deli- 
 cacy ; the printing, which deHberately enhances this or 
 modifies that ; the bm-r, the diy-point work, its in- 
 tended effect ; the papers, and the different results they 
 yield, of tone or luminousness — all these things contri- 
 bute to, and are a part of, Etching's especial quality 
 and especial delight. 
 
 A comparison between Lithography and Etching in 
 particular — putting other mediums aside — leads to 
 further reflections. Lithography lacks the relief of 
 etched work. " You can't have grey and black lines "^ 
 — a skilled etcher says to me, who enjoys Lithogra})hy 
 as well as Etching, and sometimes practises it — "you 
 can't have grey and black lines, in that the printing 
 of a lithogi-aph is surface-printing, and every mark 
 upon the stone prints equally black. Therefore for 
 gi-ey work in Lithography, you must have a grain 
 upon the stone — or on the transfer-paper — that your 
 drawing is made on."" And he adds, " Whatever can 
 be done upon a lithogi'aphic stone, can be done with a 
 much higher quality upon a plate." And the soft gi'ey 
 line, he says, when got upon the stone — " well, if that 
 is what you want, in a soft-ground etching it can be 
 got much better." 
 
 As to Me/zotint again, to compare the quality of a 
 fine mezzotint from copper, with any quality that is 
 obtainable in stone, would, generally, be absurd. We 
 are brought back, however, to that which is Litho- 
 graphy's especial virtue and convenience — it gives the 
 
 228
 
 LITHOGRAPHS 
 
 autographic quality of the pencil drawing, of the chalk 
 drawing, of the drawing that is washed. 
 
 When, in these last words, I tried to indicate Litho- 
 graphy's natural limits, and said, practically, that its 
 main function was to produce " battalions "" where ordi- 
 nary drawing must produce but "single spies," I said 
 .nothing that need encourage readers to suppose that 
 its process lay perfectly at the command of every 
 draughtsman, and that the first-comer, did he know 
 well how to draw, would get from the lithographic 
 stone every quality the stone could yield. And this 
 being so, it can surprise no one if in a chapter on the 
 Revival of Lithography I give conspicuous place to the 
 young men who have really fagged at it, rather than 
 to the possibly more accomplished, the certainly more 
 famous artists who have drawn just lately on the tracing- 
 paper, oftener than not in complimentary recognition 
 of the fact that now a hundred years have passed since 
 Alois Senefelder invented the method which, half a 
 century later, Hulmandel did something to perfect. 
 
 Mr. C. H. Shannon — pre-eminently noticeable among 
 these younger men — has been discussed already. We 
 will look now at the work of another of them — Mr. 
 Will Ilothensteiii, whose mind, whose hand-work, is 
 conspicuously unlike Mr. Shannon's, in that, though he 
 can be romantic, he can scarcely be jioetic. A vivid 
 realism is bis characteristic, and, with that vivid 
 realism, romance, phantasy, caprice — either or all — 
 may find themselves in company; but poetry, hardly. 
 Mr. Rothenstein — a.s there is some reason, perhaps, for
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 telling the collector — is not only young, but extremely 
 young. His series of Oxford lithographs were wrought, 
 most of them, when he was between twenty and two- 
 and -twenty years old. It was an audacious adventure, 
 with youth for its excuse. For this set of Oxford 
 portraits was to be the abstract of the Oxford of a 
 day. In it, Professors and Heads of Houses are — men 
 who for perhaps a generation remain in their place — 
 but in it, too, are athletes, engaging undergi-aduates, 
 lads whose achievements may become a tradition, but 
 whose places know them no more. The first part of 
 the "Oxford Characters'"' — that is the proper name 
 of it — appeared in June 1893. In it, is the portrait 
 of that gi-eat Christ Church boating man, W. L. 
 Fletcher, and a portrait of Sir Henry Acland, for 
 which another more august-looking rendering of the 
 same head and figure was after a while substituted. 
 Asrain, there is an admirable vision of Max Mviller — 
 Mr. Rothenstein's high-water mark, perhaps, in that 
 which he might probably suppose to be the humble art 
 of likeness-taking. 
 
 Quite outside the charmed Oxford life are the sub- 
 jects of some of Mr. Rothenstein's generally piquant 
 portraits. There is the portrait of Emile Zola, for 
 instance. I never saw the man. This may or may 
 not be a terre-a-terre view of him. Most probably it 
 is. But certainly the face, with its set lips and hollow 
 cheeks, is cleverly rendered, though in such rendering 
 we may fancy not so much the author of the Faute de 
 VAhhe Mouret and of the Page cT Amour, as the author 
 
 230
 
 LITHOGRAPHS 
 
 of Nana and of Le Ventre de Paris. Again, there is a 
 portrait, at once refined and forcible, of that great 
 gentleman, path-breaking novelist, and dainty con- 
 noisseur, Edmond de Goncourt, elderly, but with fires 
 unquenched in the dark, piercing eyes, and the great 
 decoration, so to say, of snow-white hair. Then again, 
 the pretty, pleasing lady, the fresh young thing with 
 her big bonnet — the lady seen full-face, her lips dra^vn 
 so tenderly. Such flesh and blood as hers, had the 
 Millament of Congi-eve. If sometimes in them the 
 anatomy of the figures is expressed insufficiently, these 
 works are at least executed with well-acquired know- 
 ledge of the effects to which Lithography best lends 
 itself. It can escape no one that, whatever be their 
 faults, the artist utters in them a note that is 
 his own. 
 
 To trace, with fairness, the revival of Lithogi-aphy, 
 even in England only, it should be mentioned that a 
 generation after the achievements of Samuel Prout — 
 his records of architecture in Flanders and in Germany 
 — and the somewhat overrated performances of Hard- 
 ing, the members of the Hogarth Sketching Club made 
 one night, at the house of Mr. Way, the elder — the 
 date was the 15th of December, 1874 — a set of draw- 
 ings on the stone. They must be rare, now. Indeed 
 the only copy I have seen was that shown to me at the 
 printing-h<juse in Wellington Street. One of the best 
 was Charles Green's drawing of two iiuii — ostlers, both 
 of them, or of ostler rank — one ol" tlicin iigliliiig his 
 
 pipe. The hand is excellently modelled : the light and 
 
 231
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 shade of the whole subject has crispness and vigour. 
 Sir James Linton contributed a Coriolanus subject, in 
 something more than outline, though not fully ex- 
 pressed — and yet it is beautifully drawn. Mr. Coke 
 sent a Massacre of the Innocents, classic and charming 
 in contour; while to look at the Sir Galahad of Mr. 
 E. J. Gregory is to recall to mind completely the great 
 Romantic Gregory of that early day. 
 
 In the Paris Exhibition of Lithographs and in that 
 at Mr. Dunthorne's, there have figured a group of sub- 
 jects done lately by well - known Academicians and 
 others, and printed — some of them with novel effects 
 — by or under the close direction of Mr. Goulding, 
 that famous printer of etchings, who now, it seems, 
 has the laudable ambition of rivalling, as a printer of 
 lithographs, the great house of Way. He has his own 
 methods. The original woi'k is of extremely various 
 quality. Much of it was produced somewhat hurriedly. 
 I do not mean that the drawings were done rapidly, 
 or that it would have been wrong if they had been ; 
 for, obviously, the rapid drawing of the capable is 
 often as fine as the slowest, and has the interest of a 
 more urgent message. I mean that they were done, for 
 the most part, by those not versed, as yet, in such 
 secrets as Lithography possesses. Yet, coming often 
 from artists of distinction, many of them have merits. 
 Not much is finer than a girl's head, by Mr. Watts. 
 It is mostly " in tone ; " and it is scarcely too much to 
 say of it that it is strong as anything of Leonardo's — 
 
 as anything of Holbein's, one might as easily declare, 
 
 232
 
 LITHOGRAPHS 
 
 did not Holbein*'s name suggest, along with strength, 
 a certain austerity which ]Mr. Watts mostly avoids. 
 There is a gi'aceful figure-drawing by Loi'd Leighton, 
 who was interested in the new movement, but who 
 was far too sensible to set vast store by what — as I 
 remember that he wi-ote to tell me — was the only 
 ■lithographic drawing he had ever executed. There 
 are strong studies by Sargent — rather brutal perhaps 
 in light and shade — of male models, whose partial 
 nudity there is little to render interesting. 
 
 We are brought back then to the work of artists not 
 Academicians at all — men some of them comparatively 
 young in years, but older in a faithful following of the 
 lines on which the craft of Lithography most properly 
 moves. There is Mr. C. J. Watson, for instance. The 
 personal note — which, I cannot conceal it, I esteem most 
 of all, and most of all nmst revel in — the personal note 
 may be, with him, a little wanting ; but thorough crafts- 
 man he undeniably is. And by Mr. Oliver Hall, one 
 of the most delightful of our younger etchers, who 
 as an etcher has been treated in his place, there is a 
 vision of some gicv sweeping valley — Weivikydalc — with 
 trees only in middle distance, or in the remote back- 
 ground. In it, and perhaps even more especially in that 
 quite a<lmirable lithograj)h, The Kdgc of the Moor, 
 we recognise that wav of looking at the world which 
 we know in the etchings ; but the intelligence and 
 sensitiveness of the artist have suffered him, or led 
 him rather, to modify the work : to pro})erly adapt 
 
 it to the newer nicdiniii. The Edge of the Moor 
 
 2fJ3
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 is, I have inijilied, quite masterly ; and then again 
 there is a tree-study in which Mr. Hall recalls those 
 broad and massive, yet always elegant sketches made 
 by the great Cotman, in the latest years, generally, of 
 a life not too prolonged. 
 
 Again, among fine lithographs exhibited or not 
 exhibited, there is, by Mr. Raven Hill, Tlic Oyster- 
 Barroxv — a marvellously vivid, faithful study of " Over 
 the Water " (or of Dean's Yard, it may be) by night 
 — and the equally momentary, spontaneous vision of 
 TTie Bahy, with the rotundity of Boucher, and more 
 than the expressiveness of the late Italian : a baby lost, 
 one must avow, to all angelic dreams, and set on carnal 
 things. Perhaps Mr. George Thomson's finest litho- 
 graph remains the Brentford Eyot, though there is 
 charm of movement in at least one figure-study. By 
 Mr. Charles Sainton there is a luxurious head of just 
 the type one might expect from the author of silver- 
 points promptly seductive and popular. Mr. Walter 
 Sickert's work, whether you like it or not, at least has, 
 visibly, its source in personal observation and deliberate 
 principle. 
 
 By M. Theodore Roussel there are a whole group of 
 lithographs, dainty and delightful, exquisite and fresh 
 — with so much of his own in them, as well as some- 
 thing, of course, of Mr. Whistler's. By the side of his 
 Scene on the River — a quaint Battersea or Chelsea bit, 
 I take it — j)lace one of his supple nudities, and against 
 his supple nudity place his Opera Cloak. The man is 
 
 a born artist — he not only draws but sees, sees with 
 
 234
 
 LITHOGRAPHS 
 
 refinement and distinction. And there must come a 
 time when Roussel's work will be appreciated far more 
 
 widely. 
 
 By Mr. Jacomb Hood there is a spirited elderly 
 man's portrait, and an Idyll — a Classical or an Arca- 
 dian pa,s de quatre — of singular, unwonted charm. By 
 Mr. Corbett, the semi-classical landscape painter, there 
 is a nude study — a torso, magnificently modelled. By 
 Mr. Solomon Solomon there is a Venus, correct in 
 draughtsmanship of course; nor wanting in dramatic 
 quality, for it is not the undressed woman of too many 
 students, but Aphrodite herself — "Venus, a sa proie 
 attachee.'"' And lastly — since I cannot merely cata- 
 logue — there is Mr. Anning Bell, who has bestowed on 
 us enjoyable designs — book-plates hois ligne indeed, 
 so charming are they in their reticence and grace 
 and measured beauty. In Lithogi-aphy, we may be 
 thankful for the Tanagi-a-like grace of his Dancing 
 Girl. But "Why Tanagra?" am I asked. Because 
 Classical without austerity : provokingly Modern, and 
 yet endowed with the legitimate and endless fascina- 
 tion of Style. 
 
 And now, to end with, it seems julvisable to say 
 something on the very practical matter of the acquisi- 
 tion of lithographs by the collector, and on their cost. 
 The money value of the lithograph is most uncertain. 
 When the lithograph aj)pcars in a ])()j)uliu- niaga/ine 
 — the actual lithograph, rcmLMiilxT ; no iiitTcly j)h()to- 
 graphic vciiroduction of it — it is, on publication, valued 
 
 at a couple of shillings, or at a shilling, or, as in the 
 
 235
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 extraoi-dinary case of publication in the extinct Whirl- 
 zvhid, even at a })enny. The prices I have named are, 
 most of them at least, absurd ; but on the other hand 
 the dealer's price— sometimes the original artist's price 
 — for an impression, is wont to be excessive. A litho- 
 graph can be printed — as magazine issue suffices to show 
 — in considerable numbers. Nothing restricts it as the 
 ordinary unsteeled etching is restricted : still less, as the 
 dry-point is restricted. There is no reason, except the 
 scantiness of the public demand, why it should not be 
 issued in an edition almost as large as that of the 
 average book. Nor is the printing costly. Nor has 
 the drawing on stone or transfer-paper involved any- 
 thing more of labour, skill, or genius, than is involved 
 in the preparation of a single chapter of a fine novel — 
 of a single paragraph in a fine short story. Yet while 
 the novel sells probably at six shillings, and the whole 
 short story (and other short stories along with it) 
 sells, very likely, at three-and-sixpence, the impression 
 of a lithogi-aph — unless, as I have said before, it be 
 published in a magazine — is sold seldom for less than 
 a guinea. The Fine Ai"t Society asked something like 
 three guineas apiece, I think, for the lithographs of 
 Mr. Whistler, when it exhibited them. I mentioned 
 the circumstance to a man who was interested in the 
 question, both as artist and connoisseur. " You do not 
 want to vulgarise lithographs," he said, " by issuing too 
 many impressions." I wonder how many impressions 
 of Gray's " Elegy " have been issued ? And how many 
 
 of the "Ode to Duty.^" And I wonder whether Words- 
 
 236
 
 LITHOGRAPHS 
 
 worth and Gray have been "vulgarised," because the 
 fruit of theii- genius has been widely diffused ? 
 
 About five shillings seems a reasonable price for a 
 lithogi-aph issued in our time. AVhen draughtsmen 
 (and their publishers) realise this, they will confer a 
 boon upon themselves, and will do no injury what- 
 .€ver to us who admire them. And until they do 
 realise it, the collecting of lithographs will go on only 
 within a limited circle — a circle of rich people, possibly, 
 but most likely idle, and therefore probably, at bottom, 
 unappreciative. Indeed such a circle cannot be said 
 to consist, truly, of " collectors." They will be " pur- 
 chasers," rather — which is a different affair. 
 
 237
 
 APPENDIX
 
 CERTAIN WOODCUTS 
 
 Though when this volume was first planned, it was 
 supposed that in its regular course it might embrace a 
 chapter upon Woodcuts, mature consideration and the 
 progress of the work revealed to me the undesirableness 
 of treating either by my own or by a more qualified hand 
 the theme of Woodcuts, at any important length ; and in 
 adding here a Note on certain examples of that ancient 
 art, it is convenient that I should say plainly why the 
 matter is left to an Appendix. 
 
 First, then, treatment exhaustive, or adequate, could 
 only have been supplied by some one other than myself : 
 my own knowledge of Woodcuts being merely that of an 
 outsider who cannot withhold a measure of interest from 
 any department of Art. To have invited the continued 
 presence of an expert — an enthusiast in the particular 
 thing — would have been at least to deprive the book of 
 that unity of sentiment which comes of undivided author- 
 ship, and which even in a work of this sort may conceiv- 
 ably 1)0 a benefit : moreover, although a comj)lete Guide 
 to Old Prints must include of necessity many words about 
 woodcuts, it was doubtful whether the sulycct of " Fine 
 Prints" involved even a mention of then). I mean, it 
 might be argued, plausibly, that woodcuts, however fine 
 in their design -and the design of the giant Diiror was 
 given to some of them — are in the very nature of tilings 
 scarcely " fine " in execution. To say that tlie best recall 
 the utterance of noble sentiment by rough and uncouth 
 tongue, is not for a moment to minimise their sterling 
 
 241 u
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 wortli. Lastly, too, the collectors of them — in England 
 at least — are scanty in the extreme. When — one may ask 
 — do they appear at Sotheby's ? As objects of research, 
 they seem hopelessly out of fashion. It may be that they 
 had their day when only the Past was thought interesting. 
 But it has been one of the objects of this book to acknow- 
 ledge specially the interest of more modern achievement, 
 and not to call contemporary genius only "talent," until 
 it is contemporary no longer, and, being dead — and dead 
 long since — may be accorded its due. 
 
 But I should like to tell the beginner in the study 
 of prints one or two quite elementary things — as, for 
 instance, that the best and the most numerous of old 
 woodcuts are German ; that not a few of the earlier 
 masters of copperplate engraving carried out upon the 
 wood-block certain of their designs ; that in the days 
 of Bewick the ai-t had a certain revival, finding itself 
 well adapted — in book illustration at all events — to the 
 rendering of Bewick's homely and rustic themes. And 
 so one might go on — but after all, book illustration is no 
 part of one's theme. Let it just be mentioned about 
 Bewick — before we leave the P^nglish woodcuts for the 
 earlier masters — that the rarest and in some respects the 
 most important of his works (not, I think, the most fas- 
 cinating) is the piece known as the Chillingham Bull. 
 When only a few impressions had been taken from it, the 
 original block split. Hence the print's scarcity ; and in 
 its scarcity we see in part at least the cause of its attrac- 
 tiveness. 
 
 A passage in the last annual report made by Mr. 
 Sidney Colvin to the Trustees of the British Museum — in 
 his capacity as Keeper of the Prints — reminds me of a 
 splendid gift made lately to the nation by the munificence 
 of Mr. William Mitchell : a gift which the possession of 
 money alone, and of a generous intention, could not have 
 
 242
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 empowered him to make ; only deep knowledge, and 
 real diligence in the art of collecting, made the thing 
 possible. Through Mr. Mitchell'-s gift thei'e passes into 
 the store-house of the Department of Prints this connois- 
 seur's collection of German and other woodcuts, including 
 a series of those by Albert Diirer, which is almost com- 
 plete, and "quite unrivalled," Mr. Colvin says, "in quality 
 and condition." The whole array includes 1290 early 
 woodcuts, chiefly, as will be seen, German, and consti- 
 tuted for the most part as follows: — 104 by anonymous 
 German artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; 
 151 single cuts by Albert Diirer, together with the Little 
 Passion (set of j^roofs), the Life of the Virgin (first state, 
 without text), and the Great Passion, the Life of the 
 A'irgin, and the Apocalypse (all with Latin text, edition 
 of 1511); 63 by Hans Schaufelein, including two sets of 
 proofs of two series of the Passion ; 1 8 by Hans Spring- 
 inklee, including 14 proofs of illustrations to " Hortulus 
 Animae ;" 7 by Wolfgang Huber; .')'() by Hans Baldung ; 
 7 by Johann Wechtlin ; 19 by Hans Scbald Beham ; 43 by 
 Lucas Cranach, including an unique impression of the St. 
 George, printed in gold on a blue ground ; fiO by Albert 
 Altdorfer; 40 by Hans Burgkmair ; 313 by or attributed 
 to Hans Holbein; 9 by Urs Graf; 12 by Heinrich Holz- 
 niiillcr ; 14 by J. von Calcar ; 5 by Jost Amman; 11 by 
 Anton von Worms ; \G by Lucas van Leydcn ; 6 attributed 
 to Geofl'roy Troy ; one attributed to Marie de Medicis ; 
 the large view of Venice by Jacopo de I^arbarj, first state ; 
 9 by Niccolo Holdrini ; 5 by I.H. with the bird. 
 
 An insj)('cti<tn of this collection alone, in the Museinn 
 Print Kooni, constitutes, at first hand, an introtiuction 
 to the study of an ancient, (piaint, and pregnant art. 
 
 So luucli li.id I written when there came to me a note 
 fnnii Mr. (). Gutekunst, curiously confirming, on the whole, 
 lli<- view that I had taken as to the sinall place filled by
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 Woodcuts, generally, in the scheme of the modern collec- 
 tor. It is not, however, so much on this account that I 
 print the note here, as because it contains one or two 
 particulars — especially as to money value — not named 
 by me, and which may be of interest. "The history of 
 Woodcuts," says Mr. O. Gutekunst — instructing my ignor- 
 ance — " begins, as you know, practically with printed 
 books in which the woodcuts took the place of the minia- 
 tures, &c., in Manuscripts. During almost the whole of the 
 Fifteenth Century the Woodcut was thus confined to illus- 
 tration, and belongs far more to the bibliophile than to the 
 Print-collector. Vide ' Biblia Paupcrum ' and similar works 
 — in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands — Block Books, 
 Incunabula, &c., &c. The great period of Wood Engrav- 
 ing as a distinct art by itself — a then and now appreciated 
 mode of expression of the artist — is the first half of tlie 
 Sixteenth Century." Mr. Gutekunst then cites to me works 
 by masters, some of whom have been named. " There were 
 Diirer, Cranach, Holbein, Altdorfer, Brosamer," he says. 
 " Fine specimens of these men's work, particularly por- 
 traits, and when printed in one, two, or more colours, are 
 now, and always must have been, exceedingly rare, with 
 prices varying from, say £20 to £80 for single very fine 
 specimens. The decadence begins with .lost Amman, 
 for instjince, in Germany, and Andreani, say, in Ital}', 
 where the works of earlier, and more particularly the 
 masters of the wrong half of the Sixteenth Century, were 
 reproduced in chiar-oscuro.". With the exception perhaps 
 of the remarkable impressions in Mr. Mitchell's collection, 
 Mr. O. Gutekunst asserts that the finest specimens always 
 were most appreciated in Germany, and adds, "There 
 has ever been more interest taken in Woodcuts by German 
 collectors than by any others." 
 
 244
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Alvin, Louis. Catalogue Raisonn(5 de I'QiIuvre des trois 
 
 fr^res, Jean, Jerome, et Antoine Wierix. 8vo. 1866. 
 
 Andresen, Andreas. Der Deutsche Peintre-Graveur, oder 
 
 die Deutschen Maler als Kupferstichsammler. Two 
 
 vols. 1864-73. 
 
 Apell, Aloys. Handbuch fiir Kupferstichsammler. 1880. 
 
 AumOli.er, E. Les Petits Maitres AUemands. Barthel 
 
 et Sebald Beham. 8vo. 1881. 
 
 Les Petits Maitres AUemands. Jacques Binck, 8vo. 
 
 1893. 
 Bartsch, Adam. Le Peintre-Graveur, and Supplement. 
 
 22 vols. 1803-43. 
 B^RALDi, Hknri. Les Graveurs du Dix-Neuvieme Siecle. 
 
 4to. 
 Blanc, Charles. L'CEuvre Complet de Rembrandt. Two 
 
 vols. 8vo. 
 Bocher, Emmanuel. Les Gr.avuros Franraises du Dix- 
 Huitieme Siecle. Six volumes at present, viz. : — 
 Nicholas Lavreince. 1875. 
 Pierre Antoine Baudouin. 1875. 
 Jean I'.aptiste Simton (Jhardin. 1876. 
 Nicolas Lancret. 1877. 
 Augustiri do St. Auliin. 1871). 
 Jean I^Iichel Moreau, lo jeune. 1882. 
 BouRfARi), fJusTAVK. Los FOstumpes du Dix-lluitiumo 
 Sicclo. 1885. 
 
 245
 
 FINK PRINTS 
 
 Bryan, Michaet- Dictionary of Painters and Engravers. 
 8vo. 1865. 
 
 Supplement, by Ottley. Bvo. 1886. 
 
 A New Edition, by Graves. 8vo. 1884-86. 
 
 Chavignerie, Emile Bellieb de la, et Louis Auvray. 
 Dictionnaire General des Artistes de I'Ecole Fran^aise. 
 Two vols. 1885. 
 
 Cohen, Henri. Guide de TAmateur des Livres a Vignette, 
 du XVIir"^ Sitcle. 1873. 
 A New Edition. 1880. 
 
 Cumberland, George. An Essay on tlie Utility of Col- 
 lecting the Best Woi-ks of the Ancient Engravers of 
 the Italian School. 4to. 1827. 
 
 Daniell, Frederick B. Catalogue Raisonn6 of the En- 
 graved Works of Richard Cosway, R.A. With a 
 Memoir of Cosway by Sir Philip Carrie. 1890. 
 
 Delaborde, Le Vic;omte Henri. La Gravnre en Italie 
 avant Marc Antoine. 1882. 
 
 Le D^partement des Estampes a la Bibliotheque 
 
 Nationale. 
 
 DiDOT, A. Firmin. Histoire de Gravure sur Bois. 8vo. 
 1863. 
 
 Les Graveurs de Poitrait en France. 8vo. 1875- 
 
 77. 
 
 Les Drevet : Catalogues Raisonnds de leur Q^uvre. 
 
 1876. 
 
 DoBSON, Austin. Life and Works of William Hogarth. 
 
 1891. 
 Drake, Sir W. R. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched 
 
 Work of Francis Seymour Haden. 8vo. 1880. 
 
 Duchesne ain^. Essai sur les Nielles. 8vo. 1826. 
 
 Duplessis, George. De la Gravure de Poitrait en France. 
 
 8vo. 1875. 
 
 24G
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 DuPLESSis, George (and Bouchot). Dictionnaire dea Mar- 
 ques et Monogrammes de Graveurs. 8vo. 1886. 
 
 DuTDiT, Eugene. Manuel de 1' Amateur d'Estampes. 8vo. 
 1881-88. 
 
 L'OEuvre Complet de Rembrandt. Three vols. 4to . 
 
 1883-85. 
 
 Fagan, Louis. Catalogue of Woollett's Engraved Works. 
 8vo. 1885. 
 
 Catalogue of Faithorne's Engraved Works. 
 
 Collector's Marks. 4to. 1883. 
 
 Fisher, Richard. Early History of Engraving in Italy. 
 
 1886. 
 Gilpin, William. An Essay on Prints. 8vo. 1781. 
 Gonse, Louis. L'CEuvre de Jules Jacqueiuart. 1876. 
 Haden, Francis Seymour, About Etching. 8vo. 1878. 
 
 Etched Work of Rembrandt. A Monograph. 1879. 
 
 Hamerton, Philip Gilbert. Etching and Etchers. 1868. 
 
 A Second Edition, revised. 1880. 
 A Third Edition. 1880. 
 Hamilton, Edward. A Catalogue Raisonnc of the En- 
 graved Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 1874. 
 A Second Edition. 1880. 
 HoRNE, Henry Percy. An Illustrated Catalogue of En- 
 graved Portraits and Fancy Subjects by Gainsborough 
 and Romney. 1891. 
 Hy-mans, Henri. Ilistoire de la Gravuro dans I'Ecole de 
 Rubens. 8vo. 1879. 
 
 L'CEuvre do Lucas Vostcrman. 1895. 
 
 Jackson, John. A Treatise on Wood Engraving. 8vo. 
 1839. 
 
 A Second Edition, enlarged. 18G1. 
 Le Blanc. Manuel df^ rAmuteur d'Estampes. Two vols. 
 8vo. 1854. 
 
 24.7
 
 FINE PRINTS 
 
 Le Blanc. Catalogue de ICEuvre de J. G.Wille, 8vo. 1847. 
 
 Catalogue de I'Qi^uvre de Robert Strange. Svo. 1848. 
 
 Lehr, Max. Wenzel von Olmiitz. 1889. 
 
 Der Meister der Liebes Garten. 1893. 
 
 The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet (Chalco- 
 
 graphical Society). 1894. 
 
 Leymarie, L. de. L'Q^uvre de Gilles Demarteau I'ain^, 
 
 Gravevir du Roi. 1896. 
 Lippmann, F. Der Italiensche Holzschnitt. 8vo. 1885. 
 
 The Art of Wood Engraving in Italy in the XVth 
 
 Century (English edition of the above work). 
 
 LoFTiE, Rev. W. J. A Catalogue of the Prints of Hans 
 
 Sebald Beham. 1877. 
 Maberly, J. The Print Collector. 1844. 
 Malassis, a. p., and Thibaudeau. Catalogue Raisonn^ 
 
 de rOHuvre Grave et Lithographic d'Alphonse Legros. 
 
 Svo. 1877. 
 Mar-shall, Julian. Engravers of Ornament. 8vo. 1869. 
 Meaume, Edouard. Recherches sur la Vie et les Ouvrages 
 
 de Jacques Callot. Two vols. 1860. 
 Meyer, Julius. Allegemeines Kunstler Lexicon. 
 Middleton-Wake, Rev. C. H. Catalogue of the Etched 
 
 Work of Rembrandt. 1878. 
 Nicholson, R. George Morland. 1896. 
 Ottley, W. Y. History of Engraving. Two vols. 4to. 
 
 1816. 
 Papillon, J. B. M. Traitd Historique et Pratique de la 
 
 Gravure en Bois. 1766. 
 Parthey, G. Hollar Catalogue. 8vo. 1858. 
 Passavant, J. D. Le Peintre-Graveur. Six vols. 8vo. 
 
 1860-64. 
 Pye, John, and J. L. Roget. Notes on the " Liber Studi- 
 
 orum " of Turner. 8vo. 1879. 
 
 248
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Eawlinson, W. G. Descriptive Catalogue of Turnei-'s 
 
 " Liber Studiorum." 8vo. 1878. 
 Redgrave, S. Dictionary of Artists of the English School. 
 
 A New Edition. 1878. 
 Rosenberg, Adolf. S. and B. Beham. 1875. 
 RoviNSKi, Dmitri. L'CEuvre grav6 de Rembrandt. Repro- 
 ductions des Planches originales dans tous leurs Etats 
 
 successifs. 1890. 
 Scott, William Bell. Albert Diirer, his Life and Works. 
 
 1869. 
 
 The Little Masters. 
 Smith, J. Challoner. British Mezzotint Portraits. Five 
 
 vols. 8vo. 1878-83. 
 Smith, William. Cornelius Vischer. 8vo. 1864. 
 Thausing, Moritz. Albert Diirer, English translation. 
 
 Two vols. 1882. 
 Tiffin, W. B. English Mezzotint Portraits. 8vo. 1883. 
 Wedmore, Frederick. M^ryon, and Mdryon's "Paris," 
 
 with a Descriptive Catalogue of the Artist's Work. 
 
 8vo. 1879. 
 
 A Second Edition, revised. 8vo. 1892. 
 
 Whistler's Etchings : A Study and a Catalogue. 
 
 8vo. 1886. 
 
 Etching in England. 1895. 
 
 Willshire, W. H. An Introduction to the Study of 
 Ancient Prints. 1874. Second Edition. Two vols. 1877. 
 
 Early PrintsintheBriti.shMuseum. Two vols. 1879-83. 
 
 Wilson, J. ("An Amateur"). A Descriptive Catalogue 
 of the Prints of Rembrandt. 8vo. 1836. 
 
 Woltmann. Holbein und seine Zeit. Two vols. 1866-68. 
 
 WoRNUM, R. N. Life of Holbein. 1867. 
 
 :n<)
 
 INDEX 
 
 Absidc de NClre-Dame, 72, 73, 74 
 
 Adam and Eve, 144, 146, 16() 
 
 ^£sacus and Hcsperie, 192 
 
 Agamemnon, 101, 104 
 
 Aldegrever, 15, 154, 155, 156 
 
 Altdorfer, 150, 151 
 
 Amstcrdum, Vieio o/53 
 
 Ancient Italy, 207 
 
 Angertoii Moss, 135 
 
 Annis, 198 
 
 Antonio da Brescia, 164 
 
 Anttverp Cathedral, 44, 46 
 
 Arche du Pont NCtre-Dame, 72 
 
 Arms of Paris, 81 
 
 Armstrong, Elizabeth, 135 
 
 Arundel, 207 
 
 Arundel, Lord, 42 
 
 Assemblee au Concert, 185 
 
 Assumption, 164 
 
 Audran, 171 
 
 Aumiiller, 150, 152, 153 
 
 Aveline, 171 
 
 Avery, Samuel, 83, 109 
 
 Babi/, The, 234 
 
 Baccio Baldini, 161 
 
 Bacon, Sir Hickman, 69 
 
 Bain Pruid Chevrier, 81 
 
 Jialcony, The, 112 
 
 Bale, Sackville, 166 
 
 Bal Pave, Le, 183 
 
 Barnard, John, 38, 146 
 
 Barrett, Edward, 109 
 
 Bartolozzi, 25, 26 
 
 Bartsch, Adam, 141, 149, 163 
 
 Basire, James, 190 
 
 BasU, 203 
 
 Bate, Francis, 225 
 
 Battersea Bridge, 120 
 Battcrsea : Dawn, 108 
 Battersea Railway Bridge, 107 
 Battersea Reach, 103 
 Baudelaire, 82 
 Baudouin, 183, 184 
 Becheurs, Les, 68 
 Beham, Barthel, 149, 150 
 Beham, Hans Sebald, 149, 150, 
 
 152-154 
 Beignets, Les, 182 
 Bell, Anning, 235 
 Ben Arthur, 203, 204 
 ' Binedicite, Le, 179 
 Beraldi, 84 
 
 Bercsford, Hon. Mrs.. 218 
 Binck, Jacob, 149, 155 
 Binyon, 36 
 
 Black Lion Wharf, 116 
 Blanc, Charles, 48 
 Bocher, Emanuel, 179 
 Bolingbroke, Miss, 131, 135 
 Bolswert, 13 
 Bonne Merc, Im, 182 
 Bonus, Ephraim, 59 
 Border Towers, 133 
 Borghese Gardens, 129 
 Bosquet de Bacchus, 173 
 Boucher, Francois, 181, 182 
 Bouillon, Jules, 166, 175 
 Bouvier, Le, 38. 39, 193 
 Boydell, Alderman, 193 
 Bracquemond, 82 
 Brentford Eyot, 234 
 Brion, 171 
 Brocca Italienne, 89 
 Brooke, Stopford, 109, 145 198, 201 
 Brosamer, Hans, 149 
 Buccleuch, Duke of, 57, 203 
 
 250
 
 INDEX 
 
 Buffoon and Two Couples, 154 
 Burty, P. , 82, 83 
 Butterflies, 45 
 
 Calm, A, 203 
 
 Camargo, Mile., 176 
 
 Cameron, D. Y., 133, 134 
 
 Campo Vaccino, 37, 39 
 
 Canal, The, 56 
 
 Carritr's Stable, 219 
 
 Cars, Laurent, 171, 176 
 
 Carwardine, Mrs., 218 
 
 Cattle Going llovM- in Stormy 
 
 Weather, 37, 38 
 Cecilia, Saint, 162, 1G7 
 Cest un Filf, Monsieur / 186 
 Chain Pier, Brighton, 133 
 Chalice, The, 46 
 Clialloner, Sir Thornxis, 40 
 Champs Ell/sees, 173 
 Chanires Espa'ino's, 127 
 Chardin, 18, 19, 34. 87, 177-180 
 diaries the Fifth, 154 
 Chemise enlevde, 182 
 Chiffre d' Amour, 183 
 Christ Ilealinif the Sick, 58 
 Christ JJesci.ndin'i into Hell, 166 
 Chrisfoj/her, Saint, 142 
 Cipriani, 26 
 
 Clarke, Mary Constance, 201 
 Claude, 16, 37-30 
 Clausen, George, 225 
 Clement, 166 
 Clint, 198 
 
 Clovclly, 21, 37, 205, 206 
 Coat of Arms ivilh thr Cork, 14), 
 
 146, 147, 153 
 Coat of Arins with the Skull, 144, 
 
 146, 147 
 Cochin, 171 
 
 Colnaghi, 56, 59, 147, 175, 202, 219 
 Colvin, Sidney, 164, 243 
 C'/tnbc liottoin, 106, 107 
 CoTnmunum dans VE'jli»c St. Mf'.d- 
 
 urd, 127 
 Concert, Ijt, 1H3 
 Constable, 20, 210, 211 
 Cooke, George, 21 
 Cooke, Williuni, 21 
 Cojipennl , (JO 
 
 Corbett, 235 
 
 Coriolanus, 231 
 
 Corot, 85 
 
 Cottage with Dutch Uay Barn, 17, 54 
 
 Cottage with White Palinqs, 53 
 
 Crepy, 173 
 
 Crowhurst, 196 
 
 CrUche Casscc, 181 
 
 Dance of Cupids, 166 
 
 Dance of Damsels, 164 
 
 Dance by the Water-side, 38 
 
 Dance under the Trees, 38, 39 
 
 Dancing Girl, 235 
 
 Danlos, 166, 167 
 
 Daubignv, 85 
 
 David, 187 
 
 Dawe, 198 
 
 Day, Mr. Justice, 69 
 
 Dean, John, 218 
 
 Death Surprising a Wom.an, 154 
 
 Debucourt, 27 
 
 Delaborde, 164 
 
 Delatre, 118 
 
 Delia, 226 
 
 Demarteau, 182 
 
 Dii'art pour Ic Travail, Le, 68 
 
 Dei)rez, 23, 58, 107 
 
 Derby, Elizabeth, Countess of, 218 
 
 Desir dc Plaire, 177 
 
 Dewint, 129, 211 
 
 Diderot, 170, 181 
 
 Directeur dcs Toilettes, 185 
 
 Dowdcswdl, Walter, 109 
 
 Drake, Kir William, 102, 106, 121 
 
 Drevet, 13, 214 
 
 Dufios, 1K2 
 
 Duniesnil, 38 
 
 Diinkarton, 198 
 
 Dunlhorne, 106, 122 
 
 Duplessis, 163 
 
 Diirazzo, 164 
 
 Diirur, Albert, 14, 139-147, 161 
 
 Earloni, 97, 193, 212, 213 
 Eurlii Mornin'i, 224 
 KaHling, 198 ' 
 East, Alfred, 135 
 "EauxFortes aur Pari»,"' 77 
 
 251
 
 INDEX 
 
 Edelinck, 13 
 
 Edijc of the Forest, 135 
 
 Edge of the Moor, 233 
 
 Edinburgh, 43 
 
 Eisen, 1S3 
 
 Elliot, Mrs., 218 
 
 Ellis, F. S., 118 
 
 Embarqucment jwur Cythirc, 173 
 
 Ewpti/ Pitcher, 40 
 
 " England and Wales," 205 
 
 Entombment, 166 
 
 En trie du Vouvcnt dcs Capucins, 80 
 
 Epecs, Lctnrjucs dc Bumfs, Poig- 
 
 iiards, 94 
 Erasmus, 84 
 Erith Marshes, 107 
 Etienne-du-Mont, St., 72, 76 
 Etude dc Jeune Fillc, i)8 
 Etude du Dcssein, 179 
 Evening, Bosham, 130 
 
 Faber, junior, 212 
 
 Family, The, 41 
 
 Fanny Lryland, 61, 101, 115, 121 
 
 Fantin-Latour, 222 
 
 Farm behind Scai-borowjh, 128 
 
 Farmyard with a Cock, 192 
 
 Farmer s Stable, 219 
 
 Femme d la Tasse, 98 
 
 Fight for the Standard, 154 
 
 Fisher, Richard, 38, 41, 57, 146, 
 
 153, 163 
 Fisher, R. C, 73 
 Fishermen Going Out, 219 
 Flagellation, The, 166 
 Forge, The, 121 
 Four Naked Women, 143 
 Fragonard, 182, 183 
 Fribourg, 85 
 Fruit S'lwp, 120 
 
 Gainsborough, 215, 217, 218 
 
 GaUrie de Notre-Dame, 72 
 
 Galichon, 163 
 
 Garden, The, 112, 121 
 
 Geddes, 52, 66, 67 
 
 " Gemmes et Joyaux de la Cour- 
 
 onne," 89, 91, 97 
 Genii, The Three, 140 
 Girtin, 194 
 
 Glaiteuscs, Lcs, 68 
 Gobelct d' Argent, Lc, 178 
 Goff, Colonel, 131-133 
 (ioldwcighcr. The, 55 
 Goldweighcrs Field, 54, 55 
 Goncourt, Edmond et Jules de, 
 
 184 
 Goncourt, Edmond de, 231 
 Gonse, Louis, 90, 96 
 Goulding, 118, 232 
 Grande Toilette, La, 186 
 Gregory, E. J., 232 
 Green, Charles, 231 
 Green, Valentine, 218 
 Greenwich, Long View of, 45 
 Greuze, 19, 180, 181 
 Grim Spain, 105 
 Gutekunst, 41, 58, 147 
 Gutekunst, O., 244 
 Gutekunst, R., 122 
 
 IJaaring, Old, 59 
 
 Haden, Seymour, 38, 39, 64, 100- 
 
 107 
 Hall, Oliver, 134, 135, 233 
 Halliford-on- Thames, 66 
 Halsted, 201 
 
 Hamerton, P. G., 73, 107, 160, 161 
 Hamilton, Lady, 217 
 Hamilton, Dr., 216 
 ITaut d'lm Battant dc Porte, Le, 84 
 Heaton, Mrs., 145 
 Helleu, P., 22, 98 
 Herkomer, 131 
 Heureuse Fecondit6, L', 182 
 Hey wood. Rev. J. J., 43, 82 
 Higgins, Alfred, 69 
 Hill, Raven, 234 
 Hind Head Hill, 203 
 Hippesley, Sir John, 201 
 Hirsch, 82 
 Hivcr, L', 176 
 "Histoire de la Porcelaine," 88, 
 
 89, 90, 95, 97 
 Hodges, 198 , 
 Hogarth, 18 
 Holbein, 57 
 Holford, 17, 55, 58, 166 
 Hollar, Wenccslaus, 36, 42-47 
 Hollar, 46 
 
 252
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hdy hlrnul Cathedral, 203 
 Hood, Jacomb, 185, 234 
 Hoppner, 215 
 Home, Percy, 21G 
 Holrovd, Charles, 128, 129 
 Horsburgh, 37 
 Hubert, Saint, 147 
 Huet, Paul, 67 
 Hulmandel, 220 
 Hume, Sir Abraham, 57 
 Hutchinson, 121 
 Huysum, Jan Van, 97 
 Hymans, Henri, 99 
 
 lie Enclianti'e, L\ 174 
 Incendie, L\ 127 
 Irvjleborough, 20(> 
 his, Temple of, 204 
 " Italy," The, 207 
 Jtchen Abbas Bridge, 133 
 
 Jacquemart, Albert, 86 
 
 Jacquemart, Jules, 86-97 
 
 Jealousy, 145 
 
 Jeaurat, ISO 
 
 Jeu de Cdche-cdche, 170 
 
 Jeu de VOye, 179 
 
 Jeu de Quatre Coins, 176 
 
 JevAsh Briile, The Great, 60 
 
 Jonyhe, Clement de, 17, 61, 62 
 
 Jo.seph, Samuel, 95 
 
 Jupiter ct Ledti, 182 
 
 Kennedy, 109, 111 
 
 Keppel, Frederick, 68, 100, 109 
 
 Kin/s Lynn, 135 
 
 Kitchen, Thr, 119 
 
 Kneller, 213 
 
 Kniffht of Death, The, 145, 147 
 
 Knowl(;s, Jarncs, 7!> 
 
 Koehlcr, 141 
 
 Lacroix, 179 
 
 Laitiiirr, I/t, IHl 
 
 Lalanno, Maximo, 85 
 
 Lnncret, IH, 175 
 
 Lundscnpe nilh ii Flnr.k of f^heep, 
 
 L'lndHrnpr irit/i nn f>l>rliiil-, 56 
 
 Landscape irith a Tower, 1 7 
 
 56 
 
 Lar.je " Pool," The, 120 
 
 Larmessin, De, 176 
 
 Lavrcince, 184, 185 
 
 Lebrun, 67 
 
 Leda, 154 
 
 Ledikant, 63 
 
 Legros, Alphonse, 126-128 
 
 Leighton, Lord, 233 
 
 Lely, 20 
 
 Letitia, The Story of, 219 
 
 Lewis, 194 
 
 Leyden, Lucas van, 14, 156, 157 
 
 "Liber Studiorum," 20, 189 204 
 
 "Liber Veritatis," 191, 193 
 
 Lime- Burners, 121 
 
 Linton, Sir J. D., 231 
 
 Little Boat-house, 105 
 
 Loftie, Rev. W. J., 150, 153, 154 
 
 London from the Top of Arundel 
 
 House, 45 
 London from Greenwich, 203, 204 
 London Bridge, 120 
 fjow Tide and the Evening Star, 130 
 Low Tide : Mouth of the Hampshire 
 
 Avon, 133 
 Lucas, David, 20, 210 
 Lurrrtia, 162, 1(J7 
 Lupton, Thomas, 198 
 Lutma, 17, 60 
 
 M'Ardell, 20, 214 
 
 Maberly, 29 
 
 Macgeorge, 15. B., 73, 79, 82 
 
 Madonna with the Sleeping Child, 
 
 154 
 Mansfield, Howard, 73, 83 
 Manffgna, l!!, 161, 164, 165 
 Marc Antonio, 13, 162 
 Murrhande de Moutarde, 121 
 Margate, 37 
 Mdigot la Critique, S4 
 Marriof/r I'l la Mode, 19 
 Marshall, Julian, 39, 15 46 
 Ma.so da Kinigncrra, 159 
 Massard, 19, IKl 
 Mimlrr iif the Cadnccus, 163 
 Mauler of \Am, The. 161 
 M;iy. W. H.. 131 
 M.-rler, 1 1 
 Meer, Van der, 96 
 
 Ji5:J
 
 INDEX 
 
 McUmcJwlia, 140, 144. Hf., 147 
 Mire lie Ranhraiidt au Voile Noir, 
 
 Gl, 115 
 Mc'ryon, 21, (;9-83 
 Metsu, UG 
 Middleton-Wake, Rev. C. H., 49, 
 
 141, 143 
 Mill Brid'/e, Bosham, 130 
 Miller, William, 21, 205^ 
 Millet, .Tean-Fraii(,'ois, G7, G8 
 M in ist rants, 227 
 Miroir Fraii<;(iix, 92 
 Mitchell, William, 243 
 Modern Itali/, 207 
 Mont 6<. Gothard, 203 
 "Monte Oliveto," 128 
 Moreau le jeune, 19, 186 
 Morgue, The, 72 
 Morland, 12, 21G, 219 
 Mart tt le Bucheron, La, 127 
 Mart du Vctfjtdtond, La, 127 
 Muff, The, 115 
 Muffs, 44 
 Mytton Hall, 103, 106 
 
 Naissance de Veni^s, 182 
 
 Nuked Woman seen from Behind, 63 
 
 Nanteuil, 214 
 
 Nativity, The, 140 
 
 Nave of St. Qcnrye's Chapel, 44 
 
 Niel, 82 
 
 Nine Barrow Doion, 105 
 
 Nocturne, Batlersea, 223 
 
 Norfolk Bridye, Slioreham, 132 
 
 No7th of London, Six Views in the, 
 
 45 
 Noseda, Mrs., 202 
 Noseda, Urban, 219 
 
 Oakhampton Castle, 199 
 
 Ocianie, 80 
 
 Old Clothes Shop, 120 
 
 Oriival, 55 
 
 Oraye, A', 9G 
 
 Ornament with a Cuirass, 154 
 
 Ornament, Punel of, 157 
 
 Obtade, 3G, 40, 41 
 
 Out of Study- Window, 104 
 
 Painter, The, 41 
 
 Palaces, 121 
 
 Palace, Stirling, 133 
 
 Porw, Isle de la Cite, 119 
 
 Part hey, 43 
 
 Passavant, 141 
 
 "Passion, Little," 142 
 
 "Passion upon Copper," 142 
 
 Pater, 176, 177 
 
 Peasant Paying his Reckoning, 41 
 
 Pcckhain Rye, 66 
 
 Pencz, 149, 155 
 
 Pennell, J., 131 
 
 Perspective, 173 
 
 Petit Pont, 73 
 
 Petite Pompe, 81 
 
 PicMcd Herring Stairs, 121 
 
 Pine Trees, Christchurch, 132 
 
 Plague, 'The, 167 
 
 Pompe N6lrc-Dame, 73 
 
 Pont au Change, 72, 74 
 
 Pont au Change vers 1784, 79, 80 
 
 Pont Neiif, 72 
 
 Pont Neuf et la Samaritaine, 79 
 
 Pope's villa, 191 
 
 " Ports of England," 206, 207 
 
 Pourvoyeuse, La, 178 
 
 Premier Baiser, 96 
 
 Price's Candle- Works, 120 
 
 Procris and Ccphalus, 192 
 
 Putney, 225 
 
 Putney Bridge, 120 
 
 Pye, John, 191 
 
 Quarrel with Drawn Knives, 
 Quarter Boys, 130 
 
 41 
 
 Rag Gatherers, 119 
 Rape of Europa, 39 
 Raphatl, 12, 162 
 Rapilly, 179 
 Ravishcr, The, 144 
 Rawlinson, W. G., 189, 190, 201 
 Receipt, 'J he, 67 
 Reid, G. W., 141 
 Rembrandt, 16, 17, 48-65, 88 
 Rembrandt Drawing, 57, 58 
 Rembrandt with a Sabre, 58 
 Rembrandt with a Tiirned-up 
 Hat, 58 
 
 254
 
 INDEX 
 
 Rembrandt Farm, A, 133 
 
 Rive d'Amcrur, 96 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 12, 215, 216 
 
 " Richmondshire,'' 206 
 
 River in Ireland, 101 
 
 "Rivers of France," 207 
 
 Road in Yorkshire, 211 
 
 Rochouz's Card, 81 
 
 Roget, J. L., 196 
 
 Romanet, 186 
 
 Romnev, 12, 217 
 
 Rops, 9"9 
 
 Rosenberg, Dr., 150, 155 
 
 Rothenstein, Will, 229 
 
 2iou7id Temple, 129 
 
 Rousseau, Theodore, 67 
 
 Roussel, Theodore, 234 
 
 Royiil Exchati'/e, 46 
 
 Rubens, 13, 174 
 
 Rue des Mauvais Garrwis, 82 
 
 Rue dis ToUcs, 80 
 
 Rupert, Prince, IS 
 
 Ruskin, 198 
 
 Salikre dc Troyes, 94 
 San £iat/io, 121 
 Sainlfi/ A hbiy, 105 
 Say, W.. 197 
 
 Schijngauer, Martin, 139, 140, 161 
 Scotin, 19 
 
 Scott, W. B., 119, 151, 155 
 Sea Shells, 46 
 Seasoru, Thf, 45 
 Senefeldf-r, 221 
 Set' rn and Wi/e, 199, 204 
 Shannon, C. H., 225-227 
 Shfjiherd aivl Shejjherdeai Convers- 
 ing, 38, 39 
 Sherc Mill Poml, 103, 106 
 Short, Frank, 129, 130 
 Sichel, Mr., 125 
 Sickert, Walter, 234 
 Sie<,'«n, Liidwi;,' von, 209 
 Six, IhirijomdHtcr, 59 
 SUc/iny till tlic Flood, 1.30 
 Smith, Challoner, 21 'J 
 Smith, John, 20, 213 
 Smith, J. l{a|,liacl, 1^, 213 
 Smith nj' the Place du Ora;jon, 22'l 
 Snydrrs, 40 
 
 
 
 Sortie de VOpera, 186 
 
 •' Southern Coast," 204, 205 
 
 Spckc Hall, 121 
 
 Spring, 211 
 
 Stamford, 206 
 
 Stonchenge, 195 
 
 Stork nixd Aqueduct, 195 
 
 Stourbridge Canal, 130 
 
 Strang, Ian, 125 
 
 Strang, William, 124, 125 
 
 Summerland, 211 
 
 Summer Storm, 132 
 
 Sunset, 37 
 
 Sunset on the Thames, 105 
 
 Surugue, 171 
 
 Suttermans, 40 
 
 Sylvius, 60 
 
 Tardieu, 171, 173 
 
 Taunay, 27 
 
 Taylor, J. E., 201 
 
 Techener, 97 
 
 "Thames Set," 118, 121 
 
 Thausing, 145 
 
 Theobald, H. S., 69 
 
 Thomas, Ralph, 108 
 
 Thomson, George, 234 
 
 Thompson, J. Pvke, 73 
 
 Three Trees, The] 55 
 
 "Tickets," 26 
 
 Tillic, 120 
 
 Timber Ships, 225 
 
 Toilette, La, 184 
 
 Toilette, La Grande, 186 
 
 Tolling, Van, (iO 
 
 Toinbeau de MoUtre, 78 
 
 Tour de V Ilurloge, 72 
 
 Tourclle, dite "dc Marat," 78 
 
 Tourelle, Rue dr la Tixiranderie, 72 
 
 Trees on tin Ihlhidc, 134 
 
 Turner, Charles, 191, 197 
 
 Turner, J. M. W., 20, 21, 1.SH-20H, 
 
 210 
 "Twenty-six Etchings," 117, IIS 
 Two Ihtjfooiis, 154 
 Two Fauns, 166 
 
 Vandyke, .36, 39 
 V'innntux rt Sarrellcs, H4 
 Vaughan, Hi-nry, 201, 211 
 
 55
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Venice," The, 112,117 
 
 Venus and Cupid, 154 
 
 VigneUe with Four Cujiids, 154 
 
 Vicux Cof/, Le, 85 
 
 Virnin by the City WaU, 140, 147 
 
 Virgin with the Child in Swaddling 
 
 Clothes, 143 
 Virgin and Child with the Monkey, 
 
 144 
 Virgin with Long Hair, 146 
 Vokins, 216 
 Vosttrinan, Lucas, 40 
 Vosterman, 13 
 
 Wael, Be, 40 
 
 Wakefield, 191 
 Walsh. Jacob, 163 
 Ward, William, 197 
 
 Wareham Bridge, 105 
 
 Water Meadow, 106 
 Wasset, 75, 82 
 
 Watei-cress Gatherers, 204 
 
 Watson, C. J., 233 
 Watteau, 171-175, 177, 181 
 Way, T. R, 222 
 Weary, 121 
 
 Westminster Bridge, 119, 121 
 Whealley, 27 
 
 Whistler, 100, 107-121,222-224 
 Whistler's House, 103 
 Whitstable, 37 
 Wilkie, Sir David, 67 
 Willshire, Dr., 29 
 Windmill Hill, 104, 105 
 Windy Day, 134 
 Winged Hat, The, 223 
 Witte, De, 99 
 
 Woman with the Arrow, The, 
 63 
 
 Yarmouth, 206 
 
 Zaayidam, 107, 121 
 Zoan Andrea, 164 
 
 THE END 
 
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 885 
 
 W55f 
 
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