A final word about the landscapes. As a painter of landscape M. Legros is little known, but there exist, I believe, in London one or two considerable collections of water colours which exhibit almost exclusively his art in landscape. As far as the etchings show it at all, it is of the most account when it is called in for the accompaniment of one of those impressive and doleful ditties I have just been speaking of. Sometimes, however, it is good without this mission and significance, as in the Pécheur, where a delicate effect of early morning is given with exquisite refinement. But at other times, in which the artist is dealing with landscape charged for him with no especial meaning, his very observation of it seems to have been lacking in interest and acuteness, as in the broad slope of grass by the stream-side in his big print Les Bûcherons—a whole surface of ground that is treated mechanically and without any worthy apprehension. And yet this print, despite certain unpleasantness, contains in the heads of the woodcutters some of his finest work. A much more sketchy subject, Paysage aux Meules, has greater unity of impression. Like a good deal of Legros’s landscape, it is distinctively French, this particular glimpse of field and farm and rounded hill reminding one of the wide-stretching uplands of the Haut Boulognais. Other landscapes are of England. Others, again, are neither of England nor of France, nor of any land which may be read of in the guide-book or visited by the enterprising tourist, but of that land alone that rises in the imagination of artistic men.
INDEX.
- Bracquemond. His originality and limitation, p. [iii].
- Claude. His Bouvier and Shepherd and Shepherdess conversing, p. [4].
- Crome. His etchings, p. [9].
- Earlom. His flower-pieces in mezzotint, p. [25].
- Gonse. His catalogue of Jacquemart’s etchings, p. [18].
- Haden. His quality of vigour, p. [2];
- his judgment of Méryon, p. [4];
- his earliest etchings, p. [5];
- Mytton Hall, p. [7];
- Egham, p. [7];
- Water Meadow, p. [7];
- Calais Pier, p. [7];
- Penton Hook, p. [8];
- Sunset on the Thames, p. [9];
- Erith Marshes, p. [9];
- Agamemnon, p. [10];
- Sawley Abbey, p. [10];
- Dusty Millers, p. [10];
- his Dorsetshire etchings, p. [11].
- Hamerton, p. iii. and p. [17].
- Jacquemart. His happy circumstances, p. [12];
- he renders the soul of matter, p. [14];
- his etchings of Oriental and Sèvres porcelain, p. [15];
- Brocca Italienne, p. [16];
- Vase de Vieux Vincennes, p. [17];
- Miroir Français, p. [20];
- Vénus Marine, p. [21];
- Salière de Troyes, p. [21];
- his etchings after pictures, p. [23];
- his flower-pieces, p. [25];
- his work in water colour, p. [25];
- his concern with Art, not nature, p. [27].
- Legros. Essentially an etcher, p. [41];
- Macbeth, p. iii.
- Méryon. His method with architecture, p. [35].
- Rembrandt. His Ephraim Bonus and Clément de Jonghe, p. [4];
- his Portrait of a woman lightly etched, p. [15].
- Thibaudeau. His catalogue of Legros’s etchings, p. [41].
- Tissot, p. iii.
- Vandyke. A decisive sketcher, p. [3].
- Whistler. His quality of exquisiteness, p. [28];
- his decorative arrangements, p. [29];
- painted portraits, p. [30];
- his etched portraits, p. [32];
- Fanny Leyland, p. [33];
- The Kitchen, p. [33];
- La Vieille aux Loques, p. [34];
- his Venice series, p. [35];
- Free Trade Wharf, p. [37];
- Billingsgate, p. [37];
- Hungerford Bridge, p. [38];
- Thames Police, p. [38];
- Tyzack Whiteley, p. [38];
- Black Lion Wharf, p. [38].
LONDON
PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED,
CITY ROAD.
OTHER WORKS BY MR. WEDMORE.