Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century

By LAURENCE BINYON Of the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum
LONDON SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED, ESSEX STREET, STRAND NEW YORK, MACMILLAN AND CO. 1895



When, towards the close of the last century, Adam Bartsch began that monument of his industry and patience, Le Peintre Graveur , he devoted the first volumes of his twenty-one, not to the early engravers of Germany or Italy, but to the Dutch etchers of the seventeenth century. These were, in fact, the idols of the amateur of that day; and the indiscriminate praises which Bartsch lavishes on mediocre artists, like Waterloo or Le Ducq, sufficiently show how uncontested was their rank, and how fashionable their reputation.
Since then their vogue has considerably declined. Rembrandt, of whom Bartsch treated in a separate work, is perhaps more admired, more studied than he ever was. His etchings, reproduced in more or less accurate forms, are not only familiar to artists and to students, but, to a certain extent, reach even the general public. But Rembrandt’s glory has obscured the fame of his countrymen and contemporaries. Like Shakespeare by the side of the lesser Elizabethans, he stands forth alone and dazzling, and, though they enjoy a titular renown, they suffer a comparative neglect.
Yet, if Rembrandt is by far the greatest, others are great also. The following pages are designed to serve as a sort of introduction to the more notable among these etchers, in the same way that Mr. Hamerton’s monograph, the first of the present series of the Portfolio , was intended as an introduction to the etched work of Rembrandt.
And first, let us warn the reader who is familiar perhaps with masterpieces like the Christ Healing the Sick and Rembrandt Drawing at a Window , Clement de Jonghe , or The Three Trees , but who is not yet acquainted with the etchings of Ostade and Paul Potter, not to expect too much. Few of these lesser masters approach Rembrandt in the specific qualities of the etcher: he is beyond them all in draughtsmanship, far beyond them in the intensity of his imagination. Yet the best of them must rank high.