Fitz Roy Carrington

“ In the British Museum there is a unique impression of a Profile Bust of a Young Woman, which has been ascribed, with some show of reason, to Leonardo da Vinci. Its intrinsic beauty might lend some color to this attribution, were it not that, even in its re-worked condition, the texture and flow of the young woman’s abundant tresses, the treatment of the flowing ribbons, and the delicate shading in the face and upon the garment, betray the hand of the trained engraver. ”

“ As a composition, Dürer’s woodcut from the Life of the Virgin, is simpler and more “telling,” in that certain non-essentials have been eliminated; but could we well spare so beautiful a design as that of the candelabrum which, in Schongauer’s engraving, stands at the foot of the bed?
From the twelve plates of the Passion, each of which repays study, it is not easy to select one for reproduction. The Crucifixion, a subject which Schongauer engraved no less than six times, has a poignant charm; and for sheer beauty the Resurrection is among the most significant of the series. ”

“ Sunset in Ireland is a plate which the artist, the collector, and the general public all unite in praising. “That is the plate,” said Seymour Haden, shortly before his death, “which, in years to come, will fetch the enormous prices!” And his prophecy has come true. Both in its earlier states, less rich in burr, with a luminous evening effect, and in the later and darker impressions, it is “a thing of beauty”—one of the most remarkable landscape [Pg 270] plates of modern times, wherein the artist has captured, for once, all the poetry and melancholy sentiment of the twilight hour. ”

“ Could there be a greater contrast than the work of Whistler and Zorn? Could anything better illustrate the infinite possibilities of the art, the pliability of the medium to serve the needs of etchers as dissimilar in method as in point of attack? With the fewest possible lines (slashed, one might almost say, into the copper) Zorn evolves a portrait of compelling power, vibrant with life. Mere speed counts for little, and it is of small [Pg 218] significance that a masterpiece such as Ernest Renan is the result of a single sitting of one hour only. ”

“ It were idle to speculate upon what might have happened had so sensitive a master as Martin Schongauer possessed adequate technical skill for the interpretation of such a subject. What a masterpiece of masterpieces might have resulted if he had subjected it to that process of simplification and elimination of which he was so splendid an exponent! However this may be, Melancholia has been, and probably will continue to be, one of the signal triumphs in the history of engraving. We may never solve the riddles which she propounds; but is she less fascinating for being only partially understood? ”

“ Whistler in his “Nocturnes” paints, so to speak, on his plate with printer’s ink. Daubigny relies on lines alone, to produce his result. “Night cannot be etched” is the dictum of more than one authority. No, nor sunlight either, nor clouds! None of these things can be pictured so that blind eyes can see them. But to those who will meet the etcher half way, who are content with a suggestion and are capable of reconstructing from it the artist’s mood, these simple linear plates of Daubigny’s last period are a revelation and a delight. ”

“ Germany may claim priority in point of time, but it is doubtful whether the Florentines—for in Florence, and among the goldsmiths, the art took its rise in Italy—in the beginning were influenced by, or even acquainted with, the work of their northern contemporaries. In Germany the designer and the engraver were one, and some of the greatest masters embodied their finest conceptions in their prints. We may truly say that the world-wide reputation which Dürer and Schongauer have enjoyed for four centuries and more, rests almost entirely upon their engraved, rather than upon their painted, work. ”

“ The Virgin and Child with the Monkey is so beautiful in simplicity of handling, so delightful in arrangement of black and white, that it is hard to reconcile oneself to the comparatively coarse line work, the insensitiveness to beauty of form, the disregard of anatomy, shown in Four Naked Women of 1497—Dürer’s first dated plate—especially the woman standing to the left, who combines the slackness of Jacopo de’ Barbari at his worst with the heaviness and puffiness possible only to a Northerner unacquainted with the classic ideals of the Italian Renaissance. ”

“ The copper has been caressed, so to speak, with the needle, until it responds by yielding all those elusive half lights and luminous shadows which play among the leaves of the noble trees to the left, while on the right the landscape fairly swims in light and air. For this same quality of sunlight Claude tries again and again in his etchings, in Sunrise with complete success. When he essays to interpret Nature in her sterner moods, as in the Flock in Stormy Weather (his one plate of the year 1651) , he is far less happy. ”

“ Albert of Brandenburg was twenty-nine years of age, in 1519, when Dürer engraved this plate. There is a concentration upon the purely portrait element lacking in some of the later prints. The burin work is singularly delicate and beautiful. Indeed, nothing better, from a technical standpoint, has ever been done on copper than Dürer’s six portrait plates; and if he at times succumbs to the temptation of rendering each minor detail with the same loving care which he bestows upon the face itself, he remains, notwithstanding, one of the greatest masters of the burin the world has seen. ”

“ There is a tense and passionate quality in Christ in the Garden which places this etched plate among the noteworthy works even of Dürer, while the wind-torn tree to the left of Christ gives the needed touch of the supernatural to the composition. The Carrying Off of Proserpine—the spirited drawing for which is now in the J. Pierpont Morgan collection—is the working out, with allegorical accessories, of a study of a warrior carrying off a woman. The last of his plates, the Cannon, of 1518, with its charming landscape, was doubtless executed to supply, promptly, a popular demand. ”

“ All is stark and harsh. It is not food for babes, but it is superb.
The Risen Christ Between Saints Andrew and Longinus is Mantegna’s last engraving. Christ towers above the two subsidiary figures, with a form and bearing which would better befit a Roman Emperor returning in triumph. In this plate, above all others, Mantegna’s technique shines forth as not only adequate, but as beyond question the best—perhaps the only one—to convey his message. Translated into another mode, one feels that it would lose much of its appeal. ”

“ From the beginning, Seymour Haden was in possession of all his powers, both in etching and in dry-point. There is no uncertainty in that which he wishes to say, no fumbling in his manner of saying it. The reticences and half-hesitations of Daubigny are not for him; there is no place for Corot’s scribbled poetry. He will give us a strong man’s interpretation of the lovely English landscape, in which he takes a pride, as in any other personal possession—God’s visible and abounding bounty to a superior people. It is “the bones of things” (his own phrase) that he wishes, above all else, to give. ”

“ In the Three Cottages dry-point is used with magnificent effect. Early impressions of this masterpiece have a richness, a bloom, which is unmatched among Rembrandt’s landscape plates. A fine impression of the third state, with the added shading on the gabled end of the first cottage, represents the plate admirably. To be seen at its best, however, it should not be too heavily charged with ink, since the tree forms thereby are confused. Work such as this is so seemingly simple that one may readily overlook the power of analysis and the superb draughtsmanship it displays. ”

“ Rembrandt drew and bit and printed these little plates as no one had up to his time. But Whistler is as much in advance of Rembrandt as that great artist was of his predecessors. In these little distant views of absolutely the same subject, Whistler has triumphed. It is not necessary to explain how: you have only to see the prints to know it.... The older master is conservative and mannered; the modern master, respecting all the great art of the past, is gracious and sensitive, and perfectly free. ”

“ The landscape background may be original with the engraver but it clearly shows the influence of Giorgione. In this superb plate Campagnola’s method of combining line work with delicate flick work can be studied at its best. The Young Shepherd, known in two states—the first in pure line, the second completed with flick work—is as charming and graceful as St. John the Baptist is monumental. It justly deserves the reputation and popularity which it enjoys among print lovers. ”

“ For almost a century we have no landscape etchings of prime importance. Then, in 1640, Rembrandt appears on the scene with his View of Amsterdam, the first of a series of twenty-seven masterpieces which, beginning with this plate, comes to an end with A Clump of Trees with a Vista (1652) . The View of Amsterdam is, among Rembrandt’s landscapes, comparable to the portrait of himself leaning on a stone sill, inasmuch as it is, in its own simple linear mode, a model of what etching can be at its best. ”

“ To their right, drinking from a stream, is a unicorn, the sign of chastity. The artist seemingly wishes the lady’s message to read that she is still unwedded, and that, were she wedded, she would be a good mother. Observe, likewise, the way in which the engraver has placed the wild hogs, deer, and bears emerging from the woods, while, in the sky, numerous birds wing their flight. In the immediate foreground a lady and a cavalier are reading poetry to each other. Another lady plays to a gallant who, in a most uncomfortable attitude, holds a sheet of music. ”

“ No engraver has surpassed him in truthfulness and subtlety of observation and in the delineation of birds few artists have equalled him. His rendering of the growth and form of flowers would have delighted John Ruskin. In the King of Cyclamen and the Queen of Cyclamen the faces have an almost portrait-like individuality. The hands are well drawn and do not yet display that attenuation which is characteristic of nearly all fifteenth century German masters and is a noticeable feature in engravings by Martin Schongauer himself. ”

“ The Stag Hunt is filled with the spirit of outdoor life, the exhilaration of the chase, and the joy of the hounds in pursuing their quarry. No other engraver of the fifteenth century has left us any such truthful rendering of a hunting scene, and the life-enhancing quality of this little dry-point [Pg 103] makes even Dürer’s rendering of animal forms seem cold and relatively lifeless. ”

“ It is carefully composed and beautifully drawn; and if, to our more modern taste, there seems a little too obvious an “arrangement,” with the two vistas balancing one another at the right and left of the central group of trees, we must remember that landscape, no less than literature or costume, has its fashions, and that, in Claude’s time, balance and proportion were esteemed of greater value than the freedom and spontaneity which we today, more insistent on the individual note, esteem the chief charm of etching. ”

“ The loveliness of the background was early recognized, and several Italian engravers, including Giulio Campagnola, availed themselves of it. When Dürer’s drawings and water-colors are more generally known, he will be acclaimed one of the masters of landscape. There is a freshness, a breeziness, an “out-of-doors” quality in his water-color of the Weierhaus which will surprise those who hitherto have known him only through his engraved work, wherein the landscape undergoes a certain formalizing process. ”

“ Finiguerra’s fame as the leading worker in niello was firmly established by 1450; and although we cannot assign certainly any engraving by him to a date earlier than 1460, there is a group of Florentine primitives which may be placed between the years 1450 and 1460, thus antedating Finiguerra’s first plate by about ten years. The most beautiful of these early prints in conception, and the purest in execution, is the Profile Portrait of a Lady, a single impression of which has come down to us and is now in Berlin. ”

“ Charles Jacque was born in Paris on May 23, 1813, and to the last (he died at the ripe age of 81, in the year 1894) he retained, in country life, something of the city man’s point of view, the love of the “picturesque,” the anecdotic, in marked contrast to his greater contemporary, Jean-François Millet, whose few etchings form an epic of the soil even more powerful than his paintings. For all that, Jacque is a true etcher, working along the soundest lines and safest traditions. He is unequal: his work suffers at times from a hankering for “finish” ”

“ In this masterpiece the artist has summed up his knowledge of the human form, and has expressed, in a more convincing and vigorous measure than has any other engraver in the history of the art, the strain and stress of violent motion and the fury of combat. ”

“ Nor is it the pattern as decorative design, which is of great beauty indeed, but not at all in proportion to the spell exerted upon us. Least of all is it—for most of us—an interest in the technique or history of engraving. No, the pleasure we take in these savagely battling forms arises from their power to directly communicate life, to immensely heighten our sense of vitality. Look at the combatant prostrate on the ground and his assailant, bending over, each intent on stabbing the other. ”