II.
TURNER.
OF fine original etchers within the confines of these realms, Turner was almost the first to appear. He was the senior, considerably, of Wilkie and Geddes, who will have to be spoken of soon after him. During twelve years of his “early middle” period—between 1807 and 1819—he wrought what were in some respects important etchings upon something like seventy plates. But his etchings differed in aim, as well as in execution, from almost all the others I shall speak of in this brief general survey of the achievements, here in England, of the etche art. They did so partly by reason of the fact that it was never intended that they should be complete in themselves. They laid the basis of an effect which had to be completed by the employment of another art. They did hardly more than record—though always with an unequalled power and an unerring skill—the leading lines of those great landscape compositions which the mezzotint of the engraver (and the engraver was often Turner himself) endowed with light and shade and atmosphere. For it was by a union of these two arts that that noble publication was produced whose business it was to surpass in variety and subtlety the “Liber Veritatis” of Claude.
It is very possible that in some of the plates of his “Liber Studiorum,” Turner did not undertake the “biting-in,” with acid, of those subjects whose draughtsmanship was his own. Probably he did in all the best of them. In an etching, the strength and the perfection of the result—the relation of part to part—is dependent so much on the biting. It is hardly conceivable that where the etchings of the “Liber Studiorum” strike us as most noble, they were not wholly—in biting as well as in draughtsmanship—Turne own.
They differ much in merit, apart, I think, from the necessary difference in interest which arises from the opportunity given by one subject and denied by another for the exercise of an etche skill. They have generally, within their proper limits, perfect freedom of handling, and an almost incomparable vigour, and a variety which liberates their author from any charge of mannerism. There are few of them which could not hold their own with any plate of Rembrand done under conditions sufficiently resembling theirs. The etching of the “Severn and Wye,” or the etching of “St. Catherin Hill, Guildford,” is carried very nearly as far as the etching of the “Cottage with White Palings,” and with a result very nearly as delightful and distinguished. And in regard to the average etching of Turner, it may fairly be said that a hand put in to pluck out of a portfolio by chance any one of the seventy, would discover that it held a print which was at least the equal of that one of Rembrand with which it is fairest of all to compare it—a print of Rembrand done, like Turne, for “leading lines” alone—I mean the famous little tour de force, the “Si Bridge.”
So much for the greatness of our English master. I pass from him with this reminder, given again for final word. Wonderful as is his etching for selection of line, wonderful for firmness of hand, we must never allow ourselves to forget that it was not intended to present, that it was not intended to be in any way concerned with, the whole of a picture.
III.
GIRTIN.
THE limitations which we have marked in Turne aim in Etching, are to be noticed just as clearly in the aim of Girtin. Nay, they are to be noticed yet more. For while Turner not infrequently gave emphasis to his work by the depth and vigour of his bitten line, Girtin, in his few and rare etchings—which, it is worth while to remember, just preceded Turne—sought only to establish the composition and the outline. He did this with a skill of selection scarcely less than Turne own, and admirable, almost as in his water-colour work, is the quiet sobriety of his picturesque record.
But though Girti etchings—many soft-ground, and about twenty—may contain some lessons for the craftsman, some indeed for the artist, they are scarcely for the portfolios of the collector. They were wrought, all of them, towards the end of Girti life, that was cut short in 1802,
