“Sawley Abbey,” etched in 1873, is an instance of this, and I am glad to mention it, not alone for its merits, but because, like a certain number of its fellows among the later work, it is etched on zinc—a risky substance, which succeeds admirably when it succeeds, and when it fails, as Sir Seymour tells me, fails very much. “Windmill Hill,” “Nine-Barrow Down,” “Wareham Bridge,” and “The Little Boathouse,” and, again, that “Grim Spain” which illustrates my “Four Masters of Etching,” are the prints which I should most choose to possess
SEYMOUR HADEN. “SCOTCH FIRS.”
(The artis last etching.)
amongst those of Seymour Hade later time; whilst, going back to the period of 1864 and 1865, “Sunset on the Thames” is at the same time popular and strong, and “Penton Hook” remarkable for its draughtsmanship of tree-trunk and stump. Yet earlier—for they belong to 1860 and 1859—“Combe Bottom” is unsurpassed for sweetness and spontaneity, “Mytton Hall” for its full share of that element of Style which is never wholly absent from Seymour Hade work, and “The Water Meadow” is to be studied and enjoyed as an extraordinarily happy transcript of a sudden rain-storm in the Hampshire lowlands, where poplars flourish and grass grows rank.
XI.
ALPHONSE LEGROS.
MORE than one of the great etchers who must in fairness be treated with the British school are of foreign origin. Born at Dijon in 1837, and trained chiefly in Paris—painter, of course, as well as etcher—Alphonse Legros came to London when he was quite a young man. He has been amongst us since 1863. It was in Paris, about 1857, that he did his first etchings, and his surprising originality was declared from the beginning. The trivial, the accidental even, had no attractions for him. Even the quiet humour which one recognizes in his character, has no place in his work. Simple, serious, austere, highly refined, yet with curious tolerance of physical ugliness, and curious indifference to the beauty, at all events, of women, Monsieur Legros has conveyed to us, in his own leisurely and economical fashion, any time these thirty years, his vision of a world not ours, or
