XXII.
MACBETH AND HERKOMER AND AXEL HAIG.
SO much said, and yet nothing said of men a dozen times more popular than the generally single-minded etchers are wont to be, of whom in chief I have spoken. But to the large public, Macbeth and Herkomer and Axel Haig appeal without need of introduction—Macbeth and Haig appeal especially by treatment, and Herkomer especially by subject. Herkome theme is generally a dramatic one, and into it he introduces such obvious interest of line and of expression as may be found in a woman with the picturesqueness of age, a man comely and vigorous, a girl with Anne Pag “eyes of youth.” Mr. Herkomer has a story to tell us—sometimes the story of a life as it is told in portraiture, and he tells it with no absence of ability. But attractive as he well may be, clever as he most surely is, he rarely reaches exquisiteness; nor is there reason to think that the plate, the needle, and the aquafortis constitute in any special way his proper
HUBERT HERKOMER, R.A. “GWENDYDD.”
medium. Still, one who is, as everybody knows, so spirited and energetic an artist—the author of so many a valiant experiment, the winner of an occasional triumph in the art of Painting, from the day of the “Pensioners” to the day of the “Burgomasters”—can be a graceful sketcher on the copper, when he likes, or from time to time, at all events.
Robert Macbet inventive work in etching does not want originality; but it is not the originality of an etcher, in method or vision of the world, but rather the originality of his own painted pictures. These, or the effects of them, elaborate and interesting, he reproduces, as far as may be, in the print. For nearly twenty years he has, from time to time, etched his own conceptions, and during much of this long period the public has surely benefited by his able, dexterous translations of great or charming masters, from Velasquez to Mason. A certain proportion of his original work upon the copper was performed—and not indeed unnaturally—before Mr. Macbeth became familiar with the technical resources of the craft. Thus, the “Potato Harvest”—an interesting subject, and treated, as to its composition, very characteristically—is, as an etching, grey and colourless. “The Cambridgeshire Ferry” (of 1881), with that free, swinging, rustic girl he likes to paint, has excellent points about it, and would be called “important” by a dealer. Later, “A Cast Shoe” is luminous as well as elaborate. “Flora”—a print of 1882—is very spirited and rich, and has the sentiment of the morning. But I am not sure whether the purist in the etche art would not like most of all the rapid and indicative sketch of “A Flood in the Fens.” It is a slight study, with the rare note of action and of tragedy—a free dramatic record.
Mr. Axel Haig, the third of these popular and long accepted artists, has no painted pictures by whose method he may be inspired—he is unlike Robert Macbeth in this respect—but his able etchings of architectural subjects are nearly all of them, nevertheless, finished up to the corners. So much is actually set forth, with such elaborate and skilled pains—all the work being perfectly evident, no labour of omission having been undertaken, and little labour of choice—that the imagination of the spectator has hardly a chance of exercising itself. His intelligence, alas! is well-nigh unnecessary. And yet, as you look at the long record of buildings whose aspect has been grasped and presented by Mr. Haig with diligence and skill, you must respect, in the artist, much of his craftsmanship, and his great German quality of untiring and sagacious effort.
E. A. ARMSTRONG (STANHOPE-FORBES). “THE OPEN WINDOW.”