Save for an exceptional activity in the year 1877—the year of the Dorsetshire dry-points and of the Spanish etchings—the productiveness of Seymour Haden, since 1869, began visibly to slacken. In 1879 it stopped. The 185 etchings chronicled by Sir William Drake in “A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Francis Seymour Haden” had all been executed; and soon afterwards—either during Seymour Hade visit to America or during a visit of Mr. Keppe to these shores—the veteran artist said to the New York print-dealer: “I shall etch no more.” I imagine Mr. Keppe countenance of surprise and regret, and Seymour Hade interested observation of it. But the incident was not over. The artist brought out his etching-needle; looked at it; placed it gravely in
SEYMOUR HADEN. “THE WATER MEADOW.”
SEYMOUR HADEN. “WINDMILL HILL.”
Mr. Keppe hands. It was presented to him as a sign that that which had been spoken would surely be fulfilled, and the etcher would etch no more. Like Madame Arnould-Plessis, like Macready, too, but like how few of his fellows in any department of public effort, this artist withdrew himself from productiveness before ever the quality of his production had visibly failed.
Perhaps I shall do well, in one or two last paragraphs about him, to name, for convenience sake, a few of Sir Seymour Hade most excellent and most characteristic works—prints in which his vivid impression of the object or the scene before him has been most vividly or, it may be, subtly conveyed—prints, perhaps, which have his most distinguishing qualities of directness and vigour. The etchings of Seymour Haden are deliberately arrested at the stage of the frank sketch; but it is the sketch conceived nobly and executed with impulse. It is not the sketch upon the thumb-nail; it is not the memorandum that may be made upon a ma shirt-cuff at dinner-time, in the interval between the soup and the fish.
The tendency of his work, as time went on, was, as is usual, 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 admirable dry-point, “Windmill Hill” (done in 1877), there is no greatly-marked contrast, no surprise; there is but a steady and slow and apparently inevitable development. This I in part attribute to the fact that when Seymour Haden took up etching seriously in 1858, he was already middle-aged. He had lived for years in frequent intercourse with noble and accomplished Art; his view of Nature, and of the way of rendering her, or letting her inspire you, was large, and likely to be large, almost from the beginning. Yet, as time went on, there came, no doubt, an increasing love of the sense of spaciousness, of breadth, and of potent effect. The work was apt to become more dramatic and more moving. The hand asked the opportunity for the fuller exercise of its freedom.