XVII.
GOFF.
THE two contemporary etchers who interest me most, among those I have not had occasion, yet, to write of, are two men unlike, perhaps, in nearly everything except in their possession of the essential quality of impulse—I mean the Frenchman, Monsieur P. Helleu, and our fellow-countryman, Colonel Goff.
No—when I said they were unlike in nearly everything but the essential quality of impulse, that was clearly an exaggeration. Another thing they have in common besides impulsiveness of temperament and spontaneity of effort—a love of beautiful and of free “line.” Goff will show that in his studies of the hillside, of the shore, of foliage, of the tall grasses of the water-meadow, and of the winding stream; Helleu will show it in his studies of the most modern humanity, of the “Parisienne de Paris”—all that is most completely of the capital, subtle, refined, over-refined—but with how extenuating an elegance!—or, now again, of the young grace of well-bred girlhood, as in a certain “Etude de Jeune Fille,” with its wonderful union of Nineteenth-Century vividness with the grace of Reynolds or Gainsborough. And yet one other thing belongs to them in common—to these two men whose work presents, most certainly, in method as in subject, many a point of contrast. Both, being artists essentially, rather than merely skilled practitioners in a particular medium, swear no unbroken constancy to the art of the etcher—cannot avoid the keen perception and keen enjoyment of those “effects” and combinations for which it is not etching that affords the readiest or most appropriate means of record. And accordingly we have from Monsieur Helleu, pastels; from Colonel Goff, water-colour, wash heightened with pen-work, or pencil drawings, marked sometimes with a strong accent, at others blond and suave as silver-point itself.
Third-rate professional artists, and idle folk, or folk so busy that they have not had time to notice what good work has been done in Etching, and who it is that has done it, will at once discount Colonel Gof labours because I call him “Colonel.” But when I declare that he is, in the character of his work and in the fidelity and enthusiasm with which for years he has pursued it, no more of an “amateur” than is Sir Seymour Haden, he will be, I trust, even by the most commonplace of judges, forgiven the accident of military rank—his greatest crime being, after all, only that of having served in the Coldstream Guards. The offence may be condoned. Or, to speak seriously, I believe that military discipline, like the training of a surgeon bent on excellence in his own art, is, in truth, only an advantage. The strenuousness, the thoroughness, of good professional work, whether it be done in barrack or in hospital, in a city ma office or in the study of a writer, gives some guarantee of at all events the spirit in which the new work, the pictorial work, will be undertaken—a guarantee lacking in the case of the small professional painter, whose discipline in the arts of Life I must account to have been generally less complete. Yes, it is only fair to distinguish, when we talk about the “amateur”—and no one has less tolerance for the feeble amateur than I have—it is necessary to distinguish between the mind of the dilettante, of the idler, of the wishy-washy person who, from the high realms of an unbroken self-satisfaction, condescends occasionally to an art, and the mind of the trained and exact, and therefore of presumably the strenuous.
Ten years of frequent “joyful labour”—Macduf inestimable phrase—in the art of Etching have resulted in making Colonel Goff the author of some seventy plates, of which, to the outsider at least, the first characteristic will seem to be, the range and variety of their themes. The key to this lies in the sensitiveness of the artist, in his width of appreciation, in his reasonable enjoyment of scenes and subjects that have little in common, that present the piquancy of change. It is only figure-subjects proper that have scarcely ever been attempted by him; but in landscape, in marines, in town subjects, in subjects which involve now the expression of the passion of Nature, now the frankest introduction of every kind of modern detail of construction that is supposed to be ugly, and that the sentimental brushman declares to be “unpaintable,” Goff is thoroughly at home.
Next to mere prettiness or “strikingness,” what the public likes best in Landscape Art is not the record of Landscap happy accident or of its intricate and balanced line, but the intelligible presentation of natural effects. That probably is why, among Gof etchings, the “Summer Storm in the Itchen Valley” has thus far been the most popular. And certainly the public choice in this instance lighted upon work that was admirable and accomplished, spontaneous and effective—work not a little akin to that in Seymour Hade admirable “Water-Meadow,”
COLONEL GOFF. “NORFOLK BRIDGE, SHOREHAM.”
work not proceeding to a conscious elaboration, yet not stopping short of the point at which even for the many it may be expressive. Its quality, however, good as it is, does not really give it a unique place in the list of Gof labours; other plates—some that would be considered very humble ones—show virtues quite as valuable. Few etchers are Gof equals, fewer still go beyond him, in composition of line, in arrangement of light and shade; and as he firmly possesses this science, it is natural that very many of his plates, and not only one or two of them, should satisfactorily display it. “Norfolk Bridge, Shoreham”—of which a reproduction is given here—displays it delightfully. The unity of impression is complete; the grouping well-nigh faultless—there is the light arch of the bridge and the dark mass of clustered town behind it; church and houses and timbered sheds set amidst the winding of tidal waters; muddy shores, from above whose low sky-line there rises now and again the mast of a fishing-smack.
In “Winchester”—a little plate of great simplicity and reticence—there is the note of a mood and of an hour, as well as of a place. Behind the flat meadows and the nameless stream that small trees bend over, there is the long line of the cathedral; and one feels over all the quiet of Autumn. Not a whit less admirable—a complete and satisfying picture, wrought with strength and delicacy—is “Pine Trees, Christchurch.” Then there is the peace of “Itchen Abbas Bridge”—the little dry-point with the mille house, the waving poplar, the granary, and the slow stream. In another plate, less personal, and perhaps less happy, but still good, there is the picturesqueness of the Lewes street; in the “Ford, Shoreham,” complex activity, fullness of theme. In the “South Cone,” the great broad waves that swing about the base of Brighton Pier, not only suggest the wind and moving waters that the title implies, but have a certain decorative quality, possible only when the process of “selection” has been just, and the visible labour somewhat sternly simplified. “The Chain Pier, Brighton,” combines in high degree the charms of elegance and mystery. See the foreshortening of the steep, high wall, the delicacy of the Chain Pier and little fleet of skiffs, the reticent, suggestive touch in those grouped houses by the “Albion.” “Charing Cross Bridge,” by reason of its subtle arrangement, its victory over difficult material—more even than the “Métropole,” with the dark cliff of masonry and the lighted lamps along the Brighton “front”—is perhaps the best of all the several plates which are deliberately devoted to the treatment of such things as