Fine prints

by Sir Frederick Wedmore

CHAPTER II

The old-world Etchers, and their due place in the collector’s estimation—Claude—Dumesnil’s list of his etched work—Principal pieces—The money value of Claude’s etchings—Vandyke’s etched portraits—Ostade—Richard Fisher’s Ostades—Their prices—Wenceslaus Hollar—The immense volume of his work—Its character—Its appreciation by Heywood and Seymour Haden—Prices of Hollars in the print-market.

As I think that, speaking generally, the wisest collector is the collector who devotes himself to original work, we will begin the study of some various departments of the collector’s pursuit by a group of chapters on work that is wholly original. And among work that is wholly original, what is there that—since chronological order cannot require to be strictly observed—deserves to take precedence of the art of Etching? Not only is the art up to a certain point popular to-day—that is a consideration which need not affect the wise collector very much—but it is, of all the arts of Black and White, the one which lends itself most readily to the expression of a mood—therefore to the expression of a personality. In Line-Engraving, of which the finest examples cannot, on many grounds, be esteemed too highly, the chef-d’œuvre is slow of accomplishment. In Etching, the hour may produce the masterpiece, though indeed many a masterpiece has involved something more than the labour of a day.

Of old-world etchers whose plates should occupy the collector seriously—of old-world etchers between whom he may take his choice, or, if he prefer it, divide his attention—there are, after all, but a few. To have named Claude, Vandyke, Rembrandt, Ostade, and Hollar, is to have named the chief. Other Dutch genre painters than Ostade of course etched cleverly: only one with his perfection—his perfection, I mean, when he was at his best—Bega. Behind Rembrandt was a group of men, some of whom simply imitated, others of whom followed in ways more nearly their own. Other Dutchmen, again, like Backhuysen and Adrian Van de Velde and Zeeman—whom, nearly two centuries afterwards, Méryon worshipped—did work that need not be put aside. Latterly it has not been put aside; for in a recent Portfolio Mr Binyon made it the subject of special study. But still the greater men are the few who were named first.

Of these great men, it was Claude, Vandyke, and Ostade who wrought the fewest plates. As for Vandyke, not only was his work not vast in quantity—his labour upon each particular plate stopped at an early stage. To the copper’s detriment, as many think, others continued it, and Vandyke’s etchings are only entirely his own in that first Stage which is the stage of the sketch. Yet are they far indeed from being worthless afterwards. A background is added. The record of character remains pretty much the same.

It was not quite thus with Claude. He, like other great masters, and like some small ones, suffers by the mischief of “re-touching”; but nothing done upon his plates, or upon any imitations of them, carries the work much further than Claude himself had carried it. With all the free and easy handling of the point, there is an obvious completeness—a completeness not only for the initiated—in some of the very best of his work. In tone, in delicacy of chiaroscuro, the plate of the Bouvier—the masterpiece for atmospheric effect—is carried as far as it could have been carried by line-engraving. It has indeed quite as much atmosphere, though not quite as much delicacy of contour, as the marvellous plates done on about the same scale by the translators of Turner, whom Turner in a measure trained—I mean especially the men who wrought upon the Southern Coast series: George Cooke with Margate, Horsburgh with Whitstable, the incomparable William Miller with Portsmouth and Clovelly. Claude’s Campo Vaccino, again, is equally finished to the corners; and so, of course, in its perhaps subtler fashion, is the famous Sunset (Dumesnil, No. 15). Cattle Going Home in Stormy Weather has the appearance of more summary labour, a freedom more convincing, and more appropriate to that effect of atmosphere, which, together with the movement of beasts and herdsmen, the plate is devoted to recording. Again, complete tonality is not sought for—at all events is not obtained—in Shepherd and Shepherdess Conversing, which yet, in the rare First State of it, which alone is entirely worthy, is full from end to end of Claude’s happiest and freest, and—dare one say?—most playful work in the draughtsmanship of foliage. In the Second State one tall tree is deprived of its height and grace. The picture is spoilt, or, if not spoilt, marred.

It is now four-and-twenty years since, at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, there was held a well-chosen and perhaps the first and last important exhibition of the etchings of Claude. Dumesnil’s list of all Claude’s work in aquafortis includes forty-two prints—some of them unimportant; and of the forty-two, the Burlington Club, with access to the best collections everywhere (whatever modest things may have been said on this occasion to the contrary), managed to show twenty-six. Besides the plates mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the Dance by the Waterside, the Dance under the Trees, and the Wooden Bridge are amongst the things one would covet. In the Wooden Bridge there is the whole spirit of the broad Italian land. A fine Second State, from the cabinet of some good collector—my own is from John Barnard’s—represents the plate perfectly. Of the Bouvier you are lucky if you can get a Second State. Sir Seymour Haden, who would never tolerate a bad impression, long contented himself with a Third, though some years before he parted with his things he managed to acquire a First. That delightful collector, Richard Fisher, had a First State of the Cattle Going Home in Stormy Weather, and a noble little print it was. Mr Julian Marshall, who bought rare things in his youth, and keenly appreciates them (though, while in his youth still, he sold many), had, and doubtless retains, a First State of the Rape of Europa, which, in an impression like his own—“early, undescribed, before the plate was cleaned,” says the Burlington Club Catalogue—is indeed most desirable.

As to the money value of Claude’s etchings, in the “States” and the conditions in which they are alone desirable, the prices that were reached at the Seymour Haden sale in 1891 are as good an indication as one can well obtain. Sir Seymour’s beautiful and silvery First State of Le Bouvier was knocked down at £42; his Dance under the Trees—a First State too—at £10; his Sunrise (but it was a Fourth State) at £5, 12s. 6d.; his Shepherd and Shepherdess Conversing, in the First State, at £7 (and this was cheap); his Campo Vaccino, in the First State, at £6, 6s. He had no Wooden Bridge. At Richard Fisher’s sale, in 1892, the Bouvier, in a Second or Third State, fetched £15, and a good impression of the Dance under the Trees, £12. It will be seen that, rare though Claude’s etchings are, in good condition, they do not, in England at least, when they appear in the auction-room, command prices that can be called excessive.

The etchings of Vandyke, at all events the best of them, have fetched more. It must be that their rarity, in the most desired condition, is even greater. Sir Seymour Haden had a few superb ones. Vandyke’s own portrait (Dutuit, No. 3) sold in the Haden sale for £60; the pure etching of the Snyders for £44; the Suttermans for £30; the Lucas Vosterman, £50; the masterly De Wael—which, even in an early, well-chosen impression of a later State, one finds an enviable possession—£17, 10s. The touch of Vandyke has nothing that is comparable with Rembrandt’s subtlety, yet is it decisive and immediate, and so far excellent. And Vandyke, however inclined he may have been to undue elegance—an elegance trop voulue—in certain painted portraits, seized firmly and nobly in his etched portraits of men (and practically his etchings are only portraits of men) the masculine character and the marked individuality of his models.

Of the etchings of Adrian van Ostade, Mr Fisher had what was practically a complete collection—he had fifty plates; and as he was a great admirer of this unquestioned master of technique, this penetrating even if pessimistic observer of Life, he had taken care to have impressions of good character: in some cases, as good as it is ever possible to get. Inequality of course there was; and whilst here and there an indifferent impression fell for a few shillings, sums as important as have been paid for Ostades were realised for the rarest and the best chosen things. We will consider the prices of the most desirable. For a First State of the Man and Woman Conversing, £13 was the ransom. £14 was paid for even the Fourth State of that rarity, The Empty Pitcher. Herr Meder gave £63 for the Second State of a piece which some call spirited and some call savage, The Quarrel with Drawn Knives, and £26, 10s. for the First State of A Woman Sitting on a Doorstep. £80 was paid by the same buyer for the First State of the Woman Singing, and Mr Gutekunst gave £37 for a Fourth State of The Painter. Could I become the owner of two masterpieces of Ostade, the pieces which I should think worthy to be dignified with that name, and which I should consequently proceed to possess, would be The Family and the Peasant Paying his Reckoning. The first—not less excellent than any other in technique—is full of homely piety and truth to common things. It is one of Ostade’s larger pieces; and at the Fisher sale, the First State, which had been in the Hawkins collection, passed into the hands of Mr Deprez for £23. The Peasant Paying his Reckoning is one of the smaller plates. As the title goes far to imply, it represents a tavern visitor making ready to leave the cosy interior; the landlady looking out with keenness for the sum that is due. The piece teems with delicate observation, not only of character, but of picturesque detail, and with light and airy touch. It was a wonderful Fourth State that was in the Fisher collection; and £42 was the price that Herr Meder, the most enterprising buyer of Ostades that day, had to pay to call it his. An excellent connoisseur tells us that the earliest impressions of Ostades are generally light in tone—that good impressions are also often printed in a brownish ink, and that they are without the thick line which invariably surrounds the later ones.