POSTSCRIPT: 1905
I somehow omitted from the First Edition of this book the reference I ought to have made to Charles Jacque. It is not necessary to treat him at length; for, while few etchers have been more prolific, it must always be recollected that to be prolific is not to be important. It is by quality that an artist, in any Art, alone becomes important. Charles Jacque’s quality varies. Many of his etchings are merely dexterous memoranda of his pictures—done for his own service, presumably, rather than for the world. Even here, he can often be very spirited; sometimes even very desirable. He has done most vivacious croquis. And, for those whom the vivacious croquis does not content, it should be named that he has done likewise highly serious and more obviously well considered work, full of the true pictorial quality—and done it with the force of a painting in monochrome, and with an etching’s spontaneity.
It happens that I have just a little amended, in the text of this volume, the reference to Maxime Lalanne. By way of exception, that reference is not now quite as it stood at first: so that perhaps it may not be necessary to say anything more of Lalanne here, except just this—inequality is his characteristic, as well as elegance. He knew his business too well ever to work unadroitly. Methods of all sorts lay at his command—I do not mean “tricks.” But what did not lie at his command, was invariable fineness or freshness of vision. That is not to be wondered at. Now, however, that we have seen, at Mr Richard Gutekunst’s, the artist’s own Collection of his etchings, we have seen for the first time what they can be—in quite perfect impressions. And the result is, that true Collectors, who hitherto have been little busied about him, will look to it that Lalanne does not remain unrepresented in their portfolios.
Since I made my reference to Mr D. Y. Cameron, in the text, that most serious artist has more than justified anything I may have prophesied about him. In the old spirit, yet with even more marked excellence, he has continued and extended his work; and it will not be deemed out of place for me to mention that two years ago he had done so much and so well, that I addressed myself to making a Catalogue of what he had up to that time produced. My own belief in him is made evident by recording this circumstance. And a considerable Public—now eager for his prints—shares my convictions about him.
Muirhead Bone, in the lines that are now being written, finds himself named for the first time in this book. Of the younger etchers, there is absolutely no one who, I do not mean as regards variety of theme, but as regards perfection and intricacy of work upon a given plate, can accomplish so much. His certain and brilliant draughtsmanship, and his skill in the technique of Etching—of Dry-Point especially—have been applied chiefly to records, un-Méryon-like—that is to say, vivacious and very matter-of-fact, rather than solemn or poetic—of vanishing London. Behold his Clare Market. If the old “Gaiety” Theatre disappears from the Strand, Mr Muirhead Bone finds it in his heart to be consoled by a new one. And he depicts the slow departure of the old, and the up-building of the new. He, more than any one, has revealed the interest of scaffolding. But he is not always re-building. Sometimes—as in his plate called the Shot Tower, but really devoted, not to that only, but to Waterloo Bridge and the North Lambeth Shore—nothing is threatened. And there is a hay-mow by him, “seen” in dry-point, very much as Dewint would have seen it in Water-colour. Broad, yet extraordinarily observant, is Muirhead Bone’s work.
At the Annual Exhibitions of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, there have been noticed—since the year when Fine Prints first appeared—contributions, not in the least to be despised, by Miss Constance Pott and Miss Margaret Kemp-Welch. Really, some of them—Miss Kemp-Welch’s simple In the Marsh, for instance—are so good that they should almost suffice to enable their authors to survive the deplorable disadvantage of being only women. Quite hopefully may one look on the artistic future of these ladies—on the public recognition of it.