MIDNIGHT REVIEW
Auguste Raffet
WOMAN CHURNING
J. F. Millet
We must pass with a mention even such masters as Corot and Daubigny, both of whom have left us spirited examples, in etching, of their masterly interpretation of nature. The period we now reach brings a flood of etching, and it is but natural that the sketchy freedom, the suggestiveness sought by this new school, should conflict with the set, time-honored traditions of engraving. That serious old gentleman—Engraving—did not approve of the rollicking youngster who knocked at the gates of the Academy and the Institut for admission. The battle, after all, was not so much a quarrel between etching and engraving; rather a contest between formula versus original thought. Both in England and France the same conflict arose, the etchers calling the other side mechanical, petrified; the engravers retorting that etching, “even in the hands of Rembrandt, is uncertain, blundering.” This dictum of Ruskin and the fiery rejoinder by Sir Seymour Haden are matters of history. Our illustration, the dry-point “Sunset in Ireland,” will sufficiently show that the president of the Painter-Etchers’ Society was as apt with the etching-point as he was formidable in debate. The painter-etcher is an originating artist, but the success of his creations on the copper depends a good deal on the skill of the printer, who can, by differences of inking, wiping, pressure, and heat make an impression hard or soft in effect, rich and dark or pale and silvery at wish. To a man of James McNeill Whistler’s exquisite sensibilities and refined taste this thought of dependence on another for his subtle effects of light and tone could not but prove unendurable. Therefore he installed a press at his home and did his own printing of choice impressions, realizing in these, to the fullest extent, the possibilities of effectiveness and beauty which we admire in his etchings. Art has been defined as a selection from the truth, and, indeed, the elimination of unimportant detail and the accenting of the essentials make for the great charm in Whistler’s etchings as well as in his numerous lithographs. From this versatile genius, delightful in his rendering of the human figure and likeness, who evokes with equal facility the shimmering vistas of Venetian lagoons or the quaintness of an old French street, who can fascinate with a fleeting glimpse of a fish-shop, or make a lovely vision of a foggy reach of the Thames, we must now turn to one who has forever fixed in his plates a truthful yet ideal likeness of old Paris. “Le Petit Pont” by Charles Meryon is a characteristic plate with heavy shadows, fine feeling for structural essentials, endless modifications of light, and with Notre Dame made duly impressive by lifting it high above the nearer buildings. Every plate has a character of its own, with here and there a weird reminder of the artist’s ultimate mental doom. Only a poet could have conceived a plate like the “Stryge,” that evil figure on Notre Dame, surveying the vast field of his conquests.
SUNSET IN IRELAND
Sir Seymour Haden