ETCHING.*
THE word "sketch," as opposed to a completed design, is a very familiar term to-day, but is not infrequently employed with a more or less sketchy or hazy idea as to its definite character- istics. When the student of Art is first inducted into the mysteries of water-colour drawing, he or she soon discovers, or is quickly told, that a sketch possesses the charm and freshness which by no manner of means can be induced to remain until the drawing is completed. Sketching in water-colours from Nature is the popular art pursuit, par excellence. Our critics every year inform us that the freshness to be observed at the Sketch Exhibitions is not often as clearly discernible in the completed pictures. An artist's sketch for some great pic- ture is frequently treasured by its possessor, who delights in observing in it certain remarkable qualities which are not present, so he affirms, in the large work. • But a true idea of the meaning of a " sketch " is not be met with every day. It is too often supposed to partake largely of the character of a scrawl. Or again, provided the threads of foreground grass be but indicated by angular and vivid blotches, provided the lights and shades on a house, a cow, or a castle form a determined contrast in chiaroscuro, oftener to be traced on Whatman paper than hi space ; and the sky, above all things, be treated with the masterly facility of Cox or Collier, —and we have what is generally known as a "sketch." Therefore, when we venture to suggest, as a brief and compre- hensive definition, that "a sketeh is a skeleton," we feel that we run the risk of exciting feelings of disapproval and disappointment. But the claims of this definition will be found, we believe, to be borne out by a candid considera- tion. For what is the meaning of that power which a sketch carries, and is often denied to a quasi-complete work ? A sketch appeals to the imagination, we are told, leaving a margin clear of imagery, which the fancy of the spectator can sup- ply better than any realisation in art, except from a con- summate hand. In other words, the sketch is the organic- ally constructed basis upon which the poetic intuition is tempted to project films of imaginary rhythm and completion. The finer the sketch, the more truly is it an organic skeleton, adjusted to the nature of a complete, harmonious mind-image. The actual drawing of the sketch depends primarily upon the power to perceive truly the chief constituent elements of the theme to be portrayed. In an absolutely clear and definite sense, the artist perceives the delicately-defined arcs and curves which make up the piece-work of the different values and tones in Nature's imagery. The leading elements in the great scene may be reduced, kept in true forms, and translated deliber- ately and cautiously on to the plane of the paper to form the sketch. But the power of the eyesight and the mind in the case of an artist is, at times, quite adequate to the execution of this organic suggestion with the utmost rapidity of method. Then • The Stehai Work of Rembrandt: a Monograph. By Francis Seymour Haden. London: Macmillan. lectures at the &pal Institution. By the Same. results that medley of quaint strokes, fiery blots, and interming- ling threadwork of lines whose attractions are so dear to the popular mind. Now, etching, we maintain, is chiefly suitable for sketching, for the decisive reason that the later refinements of modelling need a tone, and not a network of lines ; a brush, and not a steel point. Rembrandt, it is true, employed tones ob- tained by the ink left in the free, unetched spaces of his plate,. as well as by the cross-hatching in line. Many of Rembrandt'x etchings approach very nearly indeed to some of the qualities of finished painting,—at least, of Rembrandt's finished painting. But though the modern etcher is always expounding Rembrandt to us, he is the very last master whose methods are approached, or even pursued. Accuracy of masses, posed in some vivid manner, true, delicate, nervously definite, so far as steel point and ink- wash can obtain it, is the mark of Rembrandt's work. Whereas the powerful school of etchers headed by Mr. Haden, lean with the strength of their whole intellect upon the conventional structures obtained by organic sweeps of line ; emphasised by every manner of convention, the distance faintly and quaintly tampered with and scratched ; while the foreground is bitten in savagely, and with an unmistakable delight in showing us that there can be no mistake as to its proximity. Some of the more early French etchers, M. Rajon, for example, follow in Rembrandt's footsteps.
We were not, then, surprised to hear Mr. Haden's opinion of what the artistic power consists in. In his recent lucid and in- teresting lectures at the Royal Institution, he said :—" When the intuitive art-faculty existed, it could no more be developed and made to produce great works of Art by academic association,. than Don Yuan could have been written by a committee. I attach only a secondary importance to technical superi- ority, and qualities communicated by tradition. The artist should be master of his materials, but the means must not be allowed to become the end, and thus lead to all sentiment and thought being merged into mere facility. Elaboration of detail is the absorption of time, and the dissipation of the original in- ception. The conception should chiefly engage the artistic im- pulse; to spend a year on a picture, is to deprive it of the inesti- mable quality of inception. The great masters, unlike the modern, worked rapidly, and preserved the integrity and power of their first conception. The sacred fire soon burns "down,. and once allowed to languish, cannot be fanned into flame The learned simplicity which the etcher has arrived at has been sometimes accounted as a sketch, and 1 was not surprised to hear that good drawing is not to be looked for in it ; but good drawing is not what it is popularly supposed to be, and as taught at South Kensington. It is the representation of objects as they appear in Nature, the art of conveying in the flat a veri- similitude of what the eye sees in space ; an aggregation of values in harmony and relation ;" all which is finely suggestive. Nevertheless, this indication, delivered con, amore, of the rapid method of the impressionist, a method often analogous to the operation of a moderate whirlwind, does not apply to the ex- tended fields of an artist's labour. We hasten to acknowledge, however, that a finer definition of good drawing could hardly be made than contained in the few closing lines of the paragraph. Nevertheless, as a matter of absolute certainty, any verisimili- tude of what the eye sees in space must redefine with miraculous accuracy details that are countless, textures innumerable, and the nuances of sheen and sombre shadow which are inseparable from the outer world. Mr. Haden, with all his desire for breadth and sincerity, has not escaped, allowing his deductions from his masterly definition to be coloured with dogmatically pro- nounced strength by the conditions of his individual art-power. When we think of the work of Bellini, or Palma, or Carpacciok of Titian, Lionardo, and Michelangelo, we know at once how fallacious that saying was, "The sacred fire soon burns down." Elaboration of detail is indeed the absorption of time, and in the case of the art of a brilliant surgeon is not to be thought of. But in the case of every one of the great masters, without excep- tion,laborious manipulation of detail was entered into at one period of their lives at least, and generally was their constant method. The technical mastery over materials by which a painter exhibits to us in his maturity the freshness of "inception," luminous through every layer and film, was gained, we believe, on one con- dition at least, which must be fulfilled always,—the condition of spending years upon every kind of drudgery and practice. It is a very frequent as well as a very great fallacy to suppose that the creative faculty, the mark of an artist, is an apparatus thoroughly equipped in the mind for its outward impress upon plastic
form. Alas ! when the inceptive power of deep, intuitive inven. tion is projected outwardly, among the pigments—white-lead, verdigris, brown earth, lamp-black, with a leavening from the vegetable tints—the desirable results that await solely at the bidding of the most careful manipulation, however decisive, come into effect only at the cost of such pains as to tell the artist at once that he must be prepared to husband a large proportion of his energy for this question alone.
A verisimilitude in the flat of what we see in space de- mands an infinite amount of harmonic finish. The luminous blended zones of colour or shade in nature, disclose within their recesses vistas of organisations perfectly, gently, decisively articulated. The finish of Millais's "Order of Release," or of the "Haven of Refuge," by Frederick Walker, or of a fine work by Sir F. Leighton, or Cl-. F. Watts, or of the 4' Tribute Money," by Titian, is compatible with a power- ful handling and a strength of feeling, by the side of which seven Mr. Haden's magnificent impulsiveness pales. The great schools of Art never began to decline until they had at once learned to despise finish, and to discard any methods that were of true sublimity which had been won for them by the genius of their predecessors. Mr. Haden's remarks applied not to the art of the sketcher—a phrase used in no invidious sense, but in the sense of the layer of a constructive ground-plan, upon which is superposed by the imagination a harmonious source
• of mystery and pleasure—but applied generally to the pro- ductive labour of great art, are essentially, though made from an intellectual point of view, those of an amateur.
The modern school of Etchers includes a great variety of motives and methods of work. Its members include artists, and many distinguished ornaments of other professions, chiefly of the medical. Among artist's work, some of the portrait-heads by M. Legros, as, for instance, the heads of Mr. Delon and Mr. Prinsep, may almost compare with Raphael's work for com- bined strength and grace of work ; though we are conscious of the hazardous nature of this remark. Mr. Whistler, again, limns away at the copper with his subtle and feathery -pencil, sometimes indicating an old wooden bridge for us with the deepest feeling ; again, shadowing out some limp appalition of a girl, with vague hints as to the possi- bility of providing for half-a-dozen legs or arms, suggest- ing to the spectator the title of a paper which was once reported as having been read before the National Academy of Sciences at Washington, "On Ghosts in the Diffraction of Spectra." Mr. Hamerton with patience etches the sweep of a poplar, 'or grove of river-side trees, or an old tower in the clear 'evening light, and harangues away about the indubitable dignity of the art. Mr. Haden sets to work before Turner's -" Calais Pier," whose power affords him a field similar to a scene in Nature, and with the grip of a colossal arranging-power produces for us a creation that is as different from Turner's work as that work was from the actual scene. Mr. Palmer, on the other hand, with the earnest and never-daunted, even when wearied, skill of the practised painter, etches so delicately that his work in water-colour possesses not much greater subtlety. Mr. Hook also etches as he paints,—nobly. Mr. Chattock works from Nature, with great acuteness and feeling, and with an entire submission to her truth and her dictates ; while some oaf the finest etched work of all, by living men, will be found in the illustrations of Modern Painters.
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