I CANNOT pretend that the artistic individuality of Elizabeth Armstrong and Minna Bolingbroke (now Mrs. Stanhope Forbes and Mrs. C. J. Watson) is yet sufficiently marked to allow either to be the subject of a critical essay; but in the record of an Art in which—as in so many others—it seems generally to be decreed to women, “Thus far, and no further,” it is useful and satisfactory to note the closeness of observation and the skill of hand possessed by these two ladies. In Miss Armstrong the world some time ago recognized a particularly dainty draughtswoman; and the little print which is submitted here as an example of her talent, is a refined Genre picture. To Genre, too, belongs that which, so far as I have had the opportunity of knowing, is the happiest effort of Miss Bolingbroke. It is singularly good; the subject chosen pluckily, where only a Modern would have ventured to find it; and then the theme pictorially conceived, in the true etche spirit—this admirable little dry-point is a vision of the factory, broad, luminous, and rich. One or two other dry-points by the same artist—dry-points of plump birds, and live stock of the farmyard—suggest the possibility that in her quest for themes Miss Bolingbroke may follow in the track of a great Frenchman, and may meet with a success akin to some extent to that of Bracquemon masterpiece, “Le Haut n battant de Porte.”
Mr. Percy Thomas—a graceful draughtsman of ancient English buildings, and of the incidents of the River—must be reckoned almost as of the Old Guard, amongst the etchers of the present generation. He etched before Etching became fashionable; and now that he has long been beset with friendly and accomplished rivalry, he yet proceeds to make additions to the bulk, and perhaps even to the range, of his labours. An inequality more marked than any we are wont to perceive in the work of an important master, tells, perhaps, to some extent, against his position. And though his manner is often pretty, and is generally refined, it is but seldom distinguished. He has worked, it may be, too much, and, it may be, not always in obedience to the spontaneous prompting. Yet his methods
M. BOLINGBROKE. “AT THE LOOM.”
have ever been legitimate, and he has attained grace. His “Dorking”—with its long perspective of the sunny street in some hour of the summer afternoon—is a piece of agreeable and capable, and even of elaborate, sketching; and his “Old Lighthouse, Hastings”—one of the most entirely satisfactory of his coppers—has the charm of an admirable composition conveyed by simple and certain means.
Among the other aquafortists practising from time to time amongst us—not to speak of the more recent of the promising recruits to the Society of Painter-Etchers, who have yet to make their history—mention should not be altogether omitted of Mr. W. L. Wyllie, whose popular marine subjects need evoke no opposition, even where, as exhibitions of the etche art, they scarcely deserve to attract.
Again, there is Dr. Arthur Evershed, a ready and sensitive draughtsman with the needle, whose “Marsh Farm” is only one out of a score of evidences of his refined enjoyment of the quiet lines of uneventful lowland landscape. Sir Charles Robinson and Dr. Propert need by no means be forgotten. Mr. J. P. Heseltine has not perhaps exhibited much of late; but he, as long ago as when he wrought that series of Etchings Mrs. Noseda published—it was some twenty years since—gave ample proof of his placid, sympathetic observation of the ordinary land, and of his ability to record the charm he was not tardy in feeling. The etched work of Mr. Holmes May is, most of it, I think, more recent. It is a vigorous, independent sketching of landscape. It notes tree-form with energy and sky effects with refinement.
That potent, brilliant, but eccentric Spaniard, fashionable naturally among the younger men for his unquestioned audacity of talent—I mean, of course, Goya—has been, it would appear, the chief inspirer of a few clever prints done recently by Mr. Rothenstein, in frank, fantastic illustration of Voltair “Pucelle rléans.” In Mr. Rothenstei few things—too few as yet to permit us to really judge him as an etcher—we see, along with some inventiveness which is the artis own, not only Goy style, but Goy method—an effective, dexterous mingling of the etched line with aquatint.