Size of the original etching, 5½ × 3⅞ inches
Webster. La Rue Grenier sur l’Eau, Paris
“A fourth plate, perhaps even finer than any of these in its force, directness, and concentrated simplicity, is the Rue Grenier sur l’Eau. There is much of Meryon in its clear, crisp line-work.” Martin Hardie.
Size of the original etching, 8¾ × 4⅞ inches
Seven months during 1904 were spent at the Académie Julien under Jean Paul Laurens, in study from the nude; and that is the only academic instruction which Mr. Webster has received. A few months after his arrival in Paris, chance led him to the Bibliothèque Nationale, where he saw some of Meryon’s etchings, and fell instantly under the spell of the great artist whose sinister needle first revealed the mysterious and somber poetry of Paris and the Seine. From Meryon and from books he forthwith taught himself to etch, receiving no outside instruction, but evolving his own methods till he attained mastery of the “teasing, temper-trying, yet fascinating art”—a mastery the more valuable and complete in that it was based on his own experience. A first attempt was made from his studio window in the Rue de Furstenberg, and some copperplates went with him on his autumn holiday at Grez, that “pretty and very melancholy village” in the Forest of Fontainebleau, where Robert Louis Stevenson met the romance of his life. As the first-fruits of this holiday three little etchings won their way into the next summer’s Salon—the Rue de l’Abbaye, The Loing at Grez, and The Court, Bourron, the last being the forerunner of several subjects of similar type. At the Salon also was hung a large oil-painting of still life, a study of fabrics and porcelain; but though color will no doubt claim allegiance again, Mr. Webster has been too closely held in thrall by etching to essay further experiments in the painter’s craft.
A pilgrimage to Spain in the spring of 1905 was the source of several spontaneous and effective plates, among them St. Martin’s Bridge, Toledo, and Mirada de las Reinas, Alhambra. Up to this point Mr. Webster’s work may be considered, in a large measure, tentative and experimental, but from 1906 onward he has found in Normandy—at Pont de l’Arche and Rouen—at Bruges, and above all in Paris, the inspiration for a series of plates noteworthy for their fine craftsmanship and their expression of individuality. They have won him the recognition of connoisseurs and public without his passing through any period of undeserved obscurity. At the Paris Salon, at the Royal Academy, and in his native land, his etchings have constantly been exhibited and admired. Nor must I forget to add that in 1908 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, which, under the presidency of its veteran founder, Sir Francis Seymour Haden, has done so much to foster the revived art of etching.
Webster. Quai Montebello
“Few etchers have ever preached the gospel of light with more truth and earnestness than Webster himself in the Quai Montebello and many other plates.” Martin Hardie.