Fortuny. The Serenade
(Beraldi No. 10)
Size of the original etching, 15½ × 12¼ inches
Fortuny. A Moroccan Seated
(Beraldi No. 19)
Size of the original etching, 5½ × 4 inches
There are many other paintings of his over which it would be pleasant to linger, but, having the etchings in view, I forbear. At the same time I have driven at nothing irrelevant in speaking of Fortuny’s command over the brush, for that is very closely related to his command over the needle. It is important to remember, in the first place, that he was a born draughtsman. The fact was brought home to me when I made a pilgrimage to Barcelona, to see the big Moroccan battle-piece which he painted for the municipality not long after he had won the Prix de Rome. I saw in the spirited picture the Fortuny we all know, but I saw also, in some earlier pieces, the kind of academic work that he did under the influence of old Soberano, his master at Reus, where he was born in 1838. Yes, it was academic work, but it was the work of a youngster of genius who had a flair for form and drew it with astonishing adroitness. There, to be sure, you have the essence of Fortuny, more even than in the glitter of light and color conventionally associated with his name. The artists and critics who think that the history of painting began with Manet are wont to damn Fortuny with faint praise, talking about his dexterity as though that were a very ordinary and perhaps specious gift. Well, there is a dexterity, there is a sleight of hand, as honest as anything that you will find in Manet, and Fortuny had it. There are moments, no doubt, in which it takes your breath away as though by some deceptive stroke of conjuror’s work. But at bottom there is a sterling sincerity about it, and this, I think, is sharply perceptible in the etchings.
Paradoxically, these do not proclaim Fortuny what the master of etching is wont to be—a lover of line for its own sake, a user of it as a language possessing its own special character and charm. Rembrandt’s strength and Whistler’s exquisiteness were alike unknown to him. The truth is that Fortuny employed the needle somewhat as he employed the pen, simply for purposes of swift and free expression. There are some bewitching drawings of his, reproduced by the Amand-Durand process in the memoir by Baron Davillier, and there are others in the catalogue of the great sale of his studio effects in 1875, which, for the impression they leave, might almost be regarded as etchings. The impression in either category is very much one of “black-and-white.” Has not Fortuny been the master of a generation of illustrators? Nevertheless his drawings and his etchings are not absolutely interchangeable. In the latter there is too much of the painter for that; his figures are too closely modeled and his backgrounds are too transparent. Some of his plates, such as The Serenade, The Anchorite, the Kabyle Mort, and The Farrier, are wonderfully rich in color such as no pen draughtsman could secure. He knew how to fill his backgrounds with deep warm tone, and he could use the same vivifying touch in his treatment of the figure. It is worth while to go carefully through the little collection of etchings that he left, looking more particularly for those rather thin staccato effects which his imitators affect—one is so delightfully disappointed. I have spoken of his sincerity, his honesty. Amongst all the plates there is only one, La Victoire, which hints a contradiction. There is something factitious about the composition, recalling the Sicilian nudities hawked about by the photographers in Southern Italy. But even this etching has undeniable brilliance as a piece of technique, and, for the rest, Fortuny is the quite artless connoisseur of picturesqueness, etching his Moorish types and his portraits in the mood of the serious observer of nature aiming at the truth. On two or three occasions he appears to have let his fancy rove. His Amateur de Jardin and his Méditation both belong amongst those graceful studies of costume and pseudo-romantic sentiment with which his paintings have made us so familiar. And once he turned poet in a small way, etching that charming Idylle which may reflect no emotion whatever, but has, at all events, a certain dainty elegance; but do not think that Fortuny was really a poet. It was not in his temperament. He was sensuous, mundane, in the soul of him; the very man to enjoy just the career that fell to his lot.
Fortuny. A Horse of Morocco