Chapter XI: Part II: Seymour Haden in America (2)

“I am going to try to place sets with those persons who have been so good, on your recommendation, as to interest themselves in this work.

“MERYON.

“20, rue Duperré.”

[6] Baudelaire had already tried to obtain a set of these prints. In writing to Charles Asselineau (February 20, 1859) he commissions his friend to get from Édouard Houssaye “all the engravings of Meryon (views of Paris), good proofs on Chinese paper. _Pour parer notre chambre_, as Dorine says.” He was not successful, however, at that time. In quoting Molière, Baudelaire refers to Toinette’s speech in _Le Malade Imaginaire_ (Act II slc· v).

This letter renders sufficiently clear the kind of service Baudelaire had rendered Meryon over and above the public praise contained in his writings. What, at the first glance, is less certain is the work on which the poet was engaged at this time and for which Meryon, on his own testimony, had promised to assist him with notes. In a foot-note to this letter, M. Jacques Crépet states that it was “doubtless _L’eau-forte est à la mode_, an anonymous article published by the _Revue anecdotique_ in the latter half of April, 1862.” Personally, I doubt the correctness of this conjecture. One has but to turn to Baudelaire’s letters of the period to see that there was then under discussion another piece of work for which Meryon would have been much more likely to give assistance in the form of notes, since it directly concerned himself. Indeed, the matter almost amounted to a project of collaboration between Meryon and Baudelaire. The publisher Delâtre had promised to bring out an album of the “Vues de Paris,” and had asked the poet to prepare some text for the plates. The first reference to this tentative undertaking occurs in Baudelaire’s letter of February 16, 1860 (just a week before Meryon’s), to Poulet-Malassis:

“And then Meryon!”--he broaches the matter abruptly, after having expressed his impatience at the attitude of two other artists, Champfleury and Duranty, friends of his, toward Constantin Guys, and at a certain note of pedantry and dogmatism that was stealing into art under the influence and sanction of “realism”--“And then Meryon! Oh, as for him, it is intolerable. Delâtre asks me to write some text for the album. Good! there is an occasion to write some reveries--ten lines, twenty or thirty lines--on beautiful engravings, the philosophical reveries of a Parisian _flaneur_. But Meryon, whose idea is different, objects. I am to say: on the right you see this; on the left you see that. I must say: here originally there were twelve windows, reduced to six by the artist, and finally I must go to the Hôtel de Ville to find out the exact epoch of the demolitions. M. Meryon talks, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and without listening to any observation.”

Thus it was historical and antiquarian notes that, in all probability, Meryon had promised to jot down to facilitate the composition of a running commentary on the etchings. Meryon’s reference to the reluctance of the publisher in the very same paragraph in which he speaks of these notes, serves to remove the least doubt as to what is meant. When he tells Baudelaire not to be disturbed, it is clearly as to the time at his disposal for the preparation of his text. Baudelaire, however, seems to have been less concerned about his own share in the work than about the fate of the project as a whole. Evidently he was not satisfied at the prospects of the work with Delâtre, for, on March 9, 1860, he wrote in a postscript to Poulet-Malassis:

“I turn my letter, to ask you, very seriously, if it would not be advisable for you to be the publisher of Meryon’s album (which will be augmented) and for which I am to write the text. You know that, unfortunately, this text will not be in accordance with my wishes.

“I warn you that I have made overtures to the house of Gide....

“This Meryon does not know how to go about things; he knows nothing of life. He does not know how to sell; he does not know how to find a publisher. His work is readily salable.”

And again, on March 13, he writes, in response to some proposition from his friend:

“Relative to Meryon, do you mean by _buying the plates_ to buy the metal plates, or rather the right of selling an indefinite number of proofs from them? I can conceive that you fear the conversations with Meryon. You should carry on the negotiations by letter (20, rue Duperré). I warn you that Meryon’s great fear is lest the publisher should change the format and the paper.... What you say to me of Meryon does not affect what I write to you concerning him.”

The excellent business sense, the note of prudence and painstaking, that comes out in all this correspondence on the part of Baudelaire, and which is scarcely less notable than his unwearied devotion to the interests of his friends, ought to go far toward discountenancing the theory that a poet cannot be a good man of affairs. Still again he writes on the same subject, with recapitulations of what he had said before, to the same correspondent:

“I am very much embarrassed, _mon cher_, to reply to you relatively to the Meryon affair. I have no rights in the matter whatsoever; M. Meryon has repulsed, with a species of horror, the idea of a text composed of a dozen little poems or sonnets; he has refused the idea of poetic meditations in prose. So as not to wound him, I have promised to write for him, in return for three copies with the good proofs, a text in the style of a guide or manual, unsigned. It is, therefore, with him alone that you will have to treat.... The thing has presented itself to my mind very simply. On one side, an unfortunate madman, who does not know how to conduct his affairs, and who has executed a beautiful work; on the other, you, on whose list I want to see the best books possible. As the journalists say, I have considered for you the double pleasure of a good bit of business and of a good act.” And he compares Meryon’s case with that of Daumier, then without a publisher, to wind whom up, “like a clock,” would also, he tells Poulet-Malassis, be “a great and good bit of business.”

This is the last reference in any of the letters to Meryon, or to the album, for which Baudelaire never wrote his text, since no publisher was willing to publish the work. Had Poulet-Malassis not failed in 1861, it might have appeared, and then, in spite of the restrictions imposed upon the restive spirit of the poet, we might have had in Baudelaire’s text some literary equivalent of Meryon’s etchings. How sympathetic this would have been, is shown by the descriptive and interpretative passage from the _Salon de 1859_ already quoted, which, in a few sentences, completely defines the form of Meryon’s imaginative genius, and reveals the inmost source of its power to stir the emotions.

There was, indeed, much that was common to the genius of Meryon and of Baudelaire. The work of both was profoundly personal, and in both a powerful and somber imagination was tinged with a subtle fantasy supplied by a morbid exaggeration in the senses, which did not, however, preclude an intense and ardent preoccupation with formal perfection.

On the contrary, these two modern _détraqués_ present in their work a solidity of construction and an absolute rectitude in the rendering of their moods and dreams, that is scarcely to be found in the work of even their best-balanced and sanest contemporaries. The art of Baudelaire has been compared to that of Racine, and, in the same way, Meryon’s design has the complete economy and control of Robert Nanteuil or of Callot. Men like these make us doubt and reconsider our stock distinctions of “romantic” and “classic.” The work of Meryon and of Baudelaire answers equally to both descriptions, and assures them a place apart in their generation. Thus, while their paths crossed but for a moment, and while they never shared with each other their secret thoughts and aspirations, there is, nevertheless, no small interest for the student in these slight and fragmentary records of what, had it not been for a cruel freak of fate, might have proved an enduring and fruitful friendship.

FÉLIX BRACQUEMOND: AN ETCHER OF BIRDS

BY FRANK WEITENKAMPF

Chief of the Department of Prints, New York Public Library

Even the artist of various interests actively expressed,--the versatile artist, if that adjective be used without the suspicion of superficiality which is often its aftertaste--is very apt to become associated in the public mind with some one specialty.

Félix Bracquemond is known particularly well as an etcher of birds. Yet he has done many things, more than one well enough to have established a reputation. At twenty he painted, and exhibited at the Salon of 1853, a portrait of himself, in a manner that carries you back to Holbein, that even faintly suggests the spirit of Van Eyck in its precise and detailed utterance. The portrait clearly indicates his future activity, for he holds in his hand a bottle of acid, while etching tools lie on a table near him. His etched portraits are numerous, and include such comparatively free productions as the ones of Legros and of Meryon, and the large, minutely finished one of Edmond de Goncourt. The last named is a characteristic and typical example of Bracquemond’s art, which, even when most painstaking, somehow or other never seems labored. Bracquemond appears as a peculiar and interesting mingling of Teutonic thoroughness and Gallic _esprit_.

Size of the original etching, 12¾ × 9⅜ inches]

Size of the original etching, 12 × 9⅝ inches]

The characteristic elements in his portraits--“robustness, versatility and a resourceful mastery of technique”--are peculiar to all his work. The same artist who carefully and with honest and sympathetic adaptation translated such different products of painter’s personality as Millet’s _Man with the Hoe_ and Meissonier’s _La Rixe_, as well as canvases and drawings by Holbein (the magisterial portrait of Erasmus), Corot, Gustave Moreau, Gavarni and Delacroix, also, under Japanese influence, etched numerous designs for ceramic ware (he was for a time a sort of artist director at the Haviland factory at Limoges), fishes and birds in swirling, decorative outline. In contrast to these last named are his numerous well-finished pictures of birds and mammals. His hares, moles and mice done with loving emphasis on the texture of their furry pelts. (The vision of happy days, seen by poor bunny suspended by one leg, was reproduced as far afield as Poland, in _Tygódnik Illustrowány_.) The birds, with the delightful and strong modeling of their bodies felt under the sleek surface of their feathery coverings.

A master craftsman, he has found delight, like Buhot, Guérard and Mielatz, in technical experiments, and his interest and skill in reproductive methods are illustrated in etchings, dry-points, aquatints, lithographs, photogravures retouched with etching, engravings in color, and plates showing combinations of processes. Burty once wrote: “He contrives by repeated use of the acid on certain parts of the plate to get a black which for depth and intensity has never been equaled.” And Meryon avowed of him: “I cannot etch. That one, there, he is the true etcher.”

His active interests, and his all-embracing outlook on the life about him, found expression in such occasional productions as the etchings of figures modeled in snow by French sculptors in Paris during the Commune; the symbolical lithograph of France defending himself against the Prussian eagle, while strangling his own imperial bird; the ceramic compliment to Uncle Sam: _The Old World and Young America_, or the very large plate done as a memorial tablet for Meryon’s coffin. His hand recorded the placid, rural beauties of Bas Meudon and the quick impression of a steamboat, amusingly described by Beraldi (see No. 185). And a bit of woodland, possibly in the Bois de Boulogne, in winter snows, in combination with a gaunt wolf probably studied at the Jardin d’Acclimatation (the Paris “Zoo”), gave him opportunity for his effective _Wolf in the Snow_, also known as _Winter_ (Beraldi No. 180), which in its spirit of desolation might be many hundred miles from Paris.

And with all this, his etchings only have been spoken of here,--and they are about 800 in number. But the catalogue (issued in an edition of 220 copies) of his work exhibited at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (Salon) in 1907, includes not only etchings, but paintings, water-colors, pastels and designs executed in embroidered silk, ceramics, iron, cloisonné enamel, jade, wood and bookbindings.

Size of the original etching, 9 × 13⅜ inches]

Size of the original etching, 14 × 10½ inches]

Yet the late Walter S. Carter of Brooklyn, a most catholic print-collector, ventured fearlessly on the inviting but not always safe sliding pond of analogy, and proclaimed Bracquemond the “Michelangelo of ducks.” Without regard to the manner of the statement, we may accept the classification. For had Bracquemond never etched anything but his bird plates, he would have won his place in the annals of the fascinating art of needle and acid. Perhaps he realized that when he furnished a title-page design for the third volume, devoted to himself, of Beraldi’s “Graveurs du XIXᵉ Siècle,” consisting solely of a duck and a portfolio of prints. Much slighter in execution, but more significantly allegorical, was his frontispiece (Beraldi No. 480) for the catalogue of the second portion of the Burty collection. It represented a stand holding an open portfolio from which prints flying upward are gradually evolved into cranes. Ducks, however, have apparently been his special delight. He has pictured them in action, as in the delightful oblong picture of two ducks swimming (Beraldi No. 185) and in the equally, and amusingly, lifelike one of five ducks swimming hurriedly to a central point of common interest. Or in allegorical attitude, as in the _Canard_ (Beraldi No. 116), the herald of “fake” news. He has observed the teal along the riverside and the _Gambols_ of ducks (Beraldi No. 221), done with a simple and sympathetic delight in the doings of these water-fowl. Hardly ever, perhaps, has he better characterized the useful bird whose call, onomatopoetically imitated, has long served to characterize medical charlatanry, than in the plate known as _The Bather_ or _Canards surpris_. The three birds, who have come down to their accustomed swimming hole only to find it already occupied by a comely young woman, are alive and moving. The beholder can fairly see and hear their wonder at the unwarranted intrusion on their rights, and regards their wagging tails with much of the fascination that Septimus and Wiggleswick (in W. J. Locke’s “Septimus”) felt in the same diversion.

While the duck apparently appealed most to him, Bracquemond was attracted also by other members of the family of _Aves_. The goose, cousin to the _Anas_, he showed collectively in _Geese in a Storm_ (_The Storm Cloud._ Beraldi No. 219), which may be studied in the Avery collection at the New York Public Library, in a series of touched proofs in which the fortuitous effect of gradually added work in the sky gives somewhat the impression of a storm rising as you look at the consecutive proofs. _Ducks in a Marsh_ also move under a lowering sky, and in _It’s Raining Pitchforks_ (Beraldi No. 212) the flood-gates of heaven are fully opened, so that the water-fowl appear to find themselves doubly in their element.

Size of the original etching, 9½ × 13⅜ inches]

Size of the original etching, 10¾ × 18 inches]

Bracquemond sometimes labored through a number of states on a plate. The large portrait of Edmond de Goncourt was patiently carried through a number of progressive proofs. And in the process of thus searching for ultimate satisfactoriness he may give us such pleasant surprises as the fourth state of _Morning Mists_ (Beraldi No. 779), a pheasant piece, with its delightful background addition of trees--an airy, light impression of early morning. He has done several landscapes of a lightness which approaches a Legros-like delicacy, so that it is perplexing to compare them with such a faithfully studied but somewhat hard plate as that of the duck perplexed at sight of a turtle (_L’Inconnu_, Beraldi No. 174), and to realize that the same hand did both. Venturing still farther into the field of ornithology, he depicted golden pheasants, partridges, swallows, with sympathy for his subject and an open eye for its artistic possibilities. The human element enters into these pictures very rarely, and then only when absolutely in place. So in _At the Jardin d’Acclimatation_ (Beraldi No. 214), in which two stylishly dressed young ladies are looking at golden pheasants in an inclosure. Once, at least, in _Sea-gulls_ (Beraldi No. 782), he felt and rendered the beautiful effect of a circling, gliding flight of gulls over rolling waves, in a graceful swirl of lines combining into a harmonious pattern.

The peculiar effect of this last named plate, with its mingling of Japanese and other influences, is in striking contrast to his early and most remarkable _Haut d’un battant de Porte_ (Beraldi No. 110, done at the age of nineteen), in which the dead bodies of three birds of prey and a bat are shown nailed to a barn door, held up as a warning example in a not too smoothly flowing quatrain. To his plates of moralizing or emblematic intention, such as the one just referred to, or the _Canard_ (Beraldi No. 116), he delighted in adding such inscriptions, generally in rhyme. His verses in such cases partake a little of the halting metre of those which poor Meryon attached to certain of his plates. Such etched letterpress additions appear also in _Margot la Critique_ (Beraldi No. 113) and in _Le Corbeau_. The last named delineation of an old bow-legged crow presents a creature so weird, so uncanny, that without adventitious effects it appears as a symbol of some sinister power, felt though not realized. But a still more famous plate, because most strongly characteristic, is _The Old Cock_ (the original drawing for which is owned by Samuel P. Avery), a masterly portrait of chanticleer, in all the dignity and pomp of his mature vigor and serene self-sufficiency. Here is the poem for this:

Hé, vieux coq,
Vieux Don Juan,
Vieille voix, tu t’érailles,
Toi-même tu seras
La pierre du festin fait à tes funerailles
Et les convives, las
De livrer à ta chair de trop rudes batailles
Se reposeront des dents et des bras
Racontant à l’envie, tes amours, tes combats.

He japonized this magnificent fowl in a purely decorative spirit, without the psychological element. And on the occasion of the visit of the Russian fleet to Toulon in 1893, he repeated and emphasized the theme to the verge almost of the grotesque, in a representation of the Gallic cock, a Hercules of his kind, with the aggressiveness of conscious strength, trumpeting forth his _Vive le Tsar!_ with triumphant enthusiasm. This emblematic use of ornithological specimens has been already referred to in the case of the _Canard_. It appears notably also in _Margot la Critique_. The critic may note that _Margot_ happens to be particularly unctuous in the state before the verses, but will not be otherwise adversely influenced by this etched philippic against his brethren.

“But a still more famous plate, because most strongly characteristic, is _The Old Cock_, a masterly portrait of chanticleer, in all the dignity and pomp of his mature vigor and serene self-sufficiency.”

Frank Weitenkampf, _Félix Bracquemond: An Etcher of Birds_.

Size of the original etching, 11¼ × 9⅞ inches]

Size of the original etching, 12½ × 10½ inches]

But besides these many realistic studies of bird life there are just about as many of purely decorative interest, showing strong Japanese influence, and mostly executed for ceramic decoration. There are also decorative combinations of _Reeds and Teal_, _Swallows_ flying in graceful curves and swirls, _Lapwing and Teal_ swimming and flying. Here again we have an entirely different point of view. The loving study of nature, sometimes expressed in an uncompromising hardness in the reproduction of form or detail, or elsewhere in an almost playful lightness of touch in obedience to a passing mood, appears here with quite different results. Seemingly endless changes on the same theme of swirling, undulating curves of flying, running, strutting, swimming bodies of birds and fishes delight the eye with the rhythmic flow of ever recurrent accent on the pure beauty of line.

And at the end, when you have gone through the many portfolios of Bracquemond’s work, there occurs to you his own statement quoted by Clement Janin. It is to the effect that a work of graphic art must bear on its face, undisguised, the characteristics of the technique by which it was produced. A lithograph must be a lithograph; a wood-engraving a wood-engraving and not the imitation of an engraving on copper or of a photograph. A review of the arts of reproduction proves that this is not the truism it may seem. It is a basic principle in all art, and will bear earnest and repeated emphasis. And the notable recognition of this fact by Bracquemond is a prime factor in his success in the art that has meant so much to him.

AUGUSTE LEPÈRE

BY ELISABETH LUTHER CARY

Art Editor of the New York Times

IT is the fashion of the moment to specialize in art as in other professions, and we no longer expect to find the multiple tendencies and ambitions of a Leonardo or a Dürer, or even of the self-contained Rembrandt, in the modern artist. He is a painter or a sculptor or a wood-engraver or an etcher. He is even more closely classified as a portrait- or a landscape-painter, an animalier or a decorator, a dry-point engraver or a disciple of pure etching. If, as sometimes happens, he escapes from the threads of the Lilliputians and swings his arms in a wider sweep, it is in the mood of deprecation or excuse, as a writer may choose to whittle wood or hammer metal in order to clear his word-fogged brain.

There is, however, a wholesome and growing impression among thoughtful observers that extreme limitation and restriction produce weakness rather than strength, and when we find an artist who has something of the ancient flexibility of mind and hand it is worth our while to acclaim him.

Size of the original etching, 14⅛ × 10¾ inches]

Size of the original etching, 7½ × 11¼ inches]

Auguste Lepère has pursued a free course of development, rounding his capacities, and forming himself with balanced and reasonable attention to diversified interests. He was born in Paris in 1849. His father was the talented sculptor François Lepère, and he got, no doubt, from his father something of the latter’s taste for suggesting passion, even frenzy, in small but monumental figures. While quite young he studied with the English engraver Smeeon, and spent his first professional years in the service of illustration for _Le Monde Illustré_, _L’Illustration_, _Le Magasin Pittoresque_, and _La Revue Illustrée_ in Paris, the _Graphic_ and _Black and White_ in London, and _Scribner’s_ and _Harper’s_ in America.

Tiring of this field, he tried all things. He became in turn a metal-chaser, a decorator of leathers, a ceramist, an etcher, a wood-engraver and a painter. If we consider him chiefly as an etcher, it must be with the full appreciation that any craft mastered by him is made subsidiary to the larger principles upon which all works of art are based, whatever the medium or process. He has consistently declined to fritter away his admirable technique upon technicalities undertaken for their own sake, and his work in etching as in painting is the work of an intellect concerned with the problems of rhythm and harmony, color, tone and form, which assail artists in every field.

As an etcher he received his initiation from Bracquemond, the most robust of temperaments and at the same time the most fastidious of technicians. Lepère has been worthy of his teaching. From the first he has sought to render his impression, recorded by a vision singularly prompt and synthetic, with precise care, patiently assembling all the complex virtues of his method to the task. To his slightest plate he has brought conscience and sincerity, and also a quality without which all the moral gifts with which human nature may be endowed would have availed him nothing as an artist: the rare capacity, that is, for retaining the freshness of his vision throughout a slow process of translation.

Before examining a few of his plates to discern their significant qualities, it will be interesting to consider his own words on the aim of the engraver: notes written with reference to the change in methods of reproduction from interpretation by means of the engraver’s art to the use of photography and the resultant processes. Even his notes on engraving for the purpose of reproduction, though less closely allied to the work of his riper years than the notes on engraving from nature as an original art, are excellent reading, since they throw a clear light upon his ideals and definite convictions:

“Formerly,” he says, “when an engraver had a work to reproduce, it was _absolutely necessary for him to see it_. He could then study it, comprehend it, and consequently extract its essential principle, simplify it, adapt it to his mode of expression, engrave it.

“If he had not the gift of composition, that of design was necessary in order to make his transposition; that of interpretation, in order to gather the idea of the creator of his model. His work was almost the equal of the work of an original engraver who usually interprets a composition or a model given by nature.

“His art was that of transposition. He took color or mass and made a song in a different key, keeping only the relative values of the shadows and lights and the contours of the objects.

Size of the original etching, 8⅝ × 12½ inches]

Size of the original etching, 7⅞ × 9¾ inches]

“Photography has come to change all that. It has facilitated the task of the engraver, who, for the most part, has not even seen the works he reproduces. The science of design is almost reduced to knowing how to trace; as for simplifying a photograph, it can only make matters worse. Such as it is, a photograph forms a perfect gamut in which nothing can be changed without losing everything; to extract a line from it is impossible, so indiscernible is the passage from one object to another, a figure in the background, etc., etc.

“Photography is a reproduction; it becomes a betrayal. What is the copy interpreted by this betrayal? How can one extract the character of anything if the true model is not there?

“Here, then, is our engraver obliged to copy with his precise art from something quite vague. Photography sees the globs of color, the accidents of a picture, with as much interest as the most beautiful design. What will he put in the place of these accidents? He traces, he copies; and as the photograph is stupid, he copies a stupidity.

“He does this so thoroughly that he can be dispensed with, the means of printing a photograph having been discovered. What imitates a photograph most completely if not a photogravure? This attains to a degree of impersonality so great that the poor engraver can no longer battle against it.

“For the engraver who possesses no faculty of composition to do artistic work it is necessary that he be an interpreter, a simplifier, with a very well-defined idea of the necessities of his craft, and that he know how to draw directly! He must renounce all attempts to overstep the boundaries of his craft; he must not try to express colors. One may, in an engraving, express cold and heat; that is, indeed, the main thing. But it is impossible to engrave red, yellow, or green. These are researches that encroach upon the domain of the painter and spoil everything.”

Of the original engraver more is exacted. As a true artist he must respect both his craft and the quality of his vision. He must synthetize, simplify, express, avoid photographic vision and trivialities of style; he must employ only the means forbidden to photography: those well-affirmed indications of the movements of the point which are the very foundation of the beautiful technique of engraving.

And in one phrase is summed up the essential aim of the engraver who treats his art with respect, whether he uses it for purposes of reproduction or for original work: “Not to imitate. To express.”

Lepère has followed his own doctrine to its logical conclusion. Never servile, even in his most faithful portraiture of a nature that enchants him, he works with a plenitude of science, but also with unwearied freshness of inspiration and a sympathetic feeling for the character of his subject, whether it is a curve of the river near Nôtre Dame where horses come down to drink, or a poor man’s hut with climbing vines in bloom, or the wide marshes of the Vendée. With the passage of time his vision has grown larger and calmer, his interpretations magisterial; but in his most classic moments he does not forget to infuse into his composition a strong feeling for this intimate characterization. He is a true creator, living not only above but in his conception. He is at once serene and moved, in command of his intellectual instrument and impelled by his personal interest.

The _Journée d’Inventaire_ is a plate that shows clearly this double action of the artist’s mind. The composition is stately in both line and mass. In the background rises the lofty architecture of the Amiens Cathedral; in the foreground, in deep shadow, is a group of figures diversely occupied. The upraised arms of these figures lead naturally to the pointed arches and ascending spires. In a similar fashion, the strong darks of the foreground mount in diminishing quantity through the heavy shadows in the recesses of the doorways to the luminous blacks that mark the slender openings in the towers. It is a beautiful upward movement that repeats the song of the Gothic spirit.

These wonderful darks have also another function. Echoed as they are, in the small, sharp shadows of the multitudinous detail, they send the light quivering all through the picture. It pours down from a sky empty of clouds, and causes the web of decorative imagery with which the structure is draped to shimmer like a fabric set with precious stones. Only a true master of the subtleties possible to interwoven dark and light could thus command his atmospheric effect, and evoke from his slight and restricted materials the grandeur of the immense pile of stone raised by the hands of man, and the contrasting evanescence of the passing sunshine caressing every boss and hollow in the richly manipulated surfaces. It is perhaps not too much to say that nothing more remarkable in its kind has been done in the present century. The element of drama is added by the turmoil of little figures in shadow at the base of the cathedral, seen in minute detail through the translucent darkness and agitated by their human accidents and emotions. The whole spirit of France, its imperishable monuments, its sparkle of sunshine, its reasonable architecture, its vivid life, may be inferred from this remarkable plate.

Very different in sentiment and less close to perfection in the relation of the parts of the design to the whole, is _La Chûte de Ballon_; yet this also is a beautiful plate. As in the _Journée d’Inventaire_, the eye is led upward by the gestures of the crowd in the foreground to the point of interest, the balloon hung poised above the trees and houses. There is the same contrast of movement, too, in the agitated figures of the foreground with the calm lines and clear light of the distance. In this plate, however, is greater piquancy of light and shade. The abrupt lines and minor episodes are carried so far into the composition as to dominate the general impression, leaving the open distance to play a secondary instead of primary part. Figures are hurrying in excitement toward the scene of the aërial drama; tree branches are tossing, there are little restless clouds passing rapidly across the sky; the air is brisk, it is a bright day, there is much to see and do, and interest is keen--that is the story one carries away from the handsome, stirring print, and also a subtle poetic suggestion that beyond the town, as one follows the slow length of a white cliff, to where it meets the horizon, is a very great world that turns from night to day, from day to night, interminably, unchecked and unspeeded by the passing storms of human glee and human woe.

Size of the original etching, 4¾ × 5¾ inches]

Size of the original etching, 7⅝ × 9¾ inches]

Size of the original etching, 8½ × 15¼ inches]

Size of the original etching, 6¼ × 6⅜ inches]

_La Seine à l’Embouchure du Canal Saint-Martin_ is more commonplace in subject, the river and its barges having entered into the artistic life of nearly all French etchers; but how few could pass with such sureness of plan, such precision of execution, from the dark bulk of the vessel in the lower left corner to the snapping black of the tree-top in the upper right corner, along a perfect diagonal, without a suspicion of stiffness or formalism in the fluent arrangement of innumerable details of pattern! This strong sense of appropriate and austere design, supported by such an easy grace of handling, is unusual in any age, and especially in our own, when grace and austerity find it almost impossible to live together in one man’s work.

Turning away from these subjects, in which nature presents a wide range to the artist and inspires him to breadth and dignity of treatment, to the quaint and touching subjects drawn from peasant life in the Vendean homes, we find beneath the admirable form of Lepère’s expression thoughts tender and merry and filled with sympathy for common experience. His work becomes picturesque and living, the mood of the observer changes in response, and the pleasure given is that inspired by simple things, although the treatment of the given scene is often far from simple.

While all these plates are admirably expressive, one in particular, _Le Nid_, seems to me filled with melody, color and charm as well as with the efficient intelligence always to be found in Lepère’s work. A little solid house with thick walls stands in greenery. Children, natural, happy, unconcerned, are playing in the foreground. Beyond is a curve of low hill and a glimpse of flat plain; and still beyond, a little town with its spire. It is all very naïve and fresh; the outdoor setting has much beauty; the types of the children are unhackneyed; the gestures and positions unconventional and spontaneous. A mere glance reveals the felicity of the subject-matter, but longer acquaintance is necessary before all the resources of the design are appreciated. Even in this playful note of pleasant summer pastime we get something of the gravity and serious purpose indispensable to great etchers as to great painters. It was this characteristic that led Lepère to pull down all the detail of the middle distance below the noble swinging line of the hillock, in order to keep the severity of that magnificent curve. It was this which led him to follow a repeating curve in the arrangement and environment of the children, apparently so carelessly disposed among their shrubs and flowers. “Let all things play and bloom and make holiday,” he seems to exclaim in this rare plate, “so long as the power of my design is not weakened by them.” The artist whose work says that to us is sure of long life in our memories.

There are several of these subjects in which children at play near their homes are the principal feature, and it would be easy to find in each some special note of gaiety and charm and quick Gallic wit. In _Les deux Bourrines_, for example, the groups of little ugly creatures, who form again a curved line of beauty, are characterized with a frank acceptance of their unclassic physiognomies that would have delighted the heart of Daumier. _Le Nid de Pauvres_ is not less romantic in its Gothic avoidance of the ideal type.

Size of the original etching, 6 × 11¾ inches]

Size of the original etching, 6⅜ × 6⅜ inches]

Size of the original etching, 9½ × 12⅝ inches]

Classic Lepère can be, however, with a curiously vital appreciation of what the living classic must have been. He has an etching of a swineherd entering the yard in which the beasts are penned. They move, grunting, toward him. Outside is a cluster of great trees with bushy foliage. The light is clear and warm. The folds of the swineherd’s mantle and his gesture are Greek. His figure might have passed across the Athenian stage, one fancies, at the time of Sophoclean drama. And the landscape has the deep repose immortalized in classic verse--such songs as in his extreme old age Sophocles made to do honor to his native village:

Our home, Colonus, gleaming fair and white:
The nightingale still haunteth all our woods,
Green with the flush of spring;
And sweet, melodious floods
Of softest song through grove and thicket ring.

Lepère is not often found in this mood, however, and the swineherd plate cannot be considered wholly characteristic of his temper of mind. It seems to have been one of those rare happenings when the mind is lifted above its habitual plane, occasion serves, and the trained hand obediently records a moment of peculiar exaltation. He is perhaps most of all his daily self in the little plate called _Le Moulin des Chapelles_. Here he shows us the machinery of the mill and the round white column of the structure as others have done, but he also shows us what others seldom do--the use of the mill. A patient horse is standing near, a man is shifting the bags of flour to his back. It is not a mere accident of landscape; it has a social and utilitarian function; it is connected with human life.

This is the most characteristic attitude of mind for an artist so alert to the significance of visible things; and it is immensely to his credit as an artist that he almost never permits this keen and throbbing interest in the world about him to trespass upon his logical use of his great instrument.

If organization of line and space, ability to establish in each of his compositions a decorative scheme adequate to support easily all the delightful episodes and figures which he chooses to introduce, is the most important element in Lepère’s artistic equipment, the next in significance is the clarity and precision of his utterance. There is no vapor in his imagination; he is a poet as well as an artist, with a poet’s sensitiveness to definition of form. All that he lacks is the intensity of emotion that sweeps away interest in everything but the personal feeling. We suspect that the world for him will always be “full of a number of things,” and that he will not be able to forget any of them in the exaltation of profound self-absorption. But he has a genius for infusing a rich suggestiveness into all that he observes, and for giving his narrative an epic character.

HERMAN A. WEBSTER

BY MARTIN HARDIE

“Did you ever see a barber sharpen his razor? That’s what it wants--the decision and the smacks.” That is one of the many quaint remarks that old John Varley used to hurl at the pupils who came to him for lessons in the complete art of painting in water-color. It is a remark very appropriate to the vast quantity of etchings, mechanically correct, but unimpassioned and uninteresting, which are produced to-day. There are wonderfully few etchers whose work strikes a note of imagination and individuality, and appeals by its force and directness, its decisions and its smacks. One of that small company is Mr. Herman A. Webster.

An artist’s life is written in his work, and the cold facts of his biography are of little real importance. To some extent, however, they act as a commentary upon his productions, and at the worst they serve to satisfy the not unpardonable curiosity which impels all of us to inquire into the age and life-history of any man whose pictures or prints awaken our instant sympathy. So I put here a few outlines of Mr. Webster’s career, merely the mile-stones that mark the route along which he has proceeded. It has been a career of strenuous activity, for the artist who now prints his finely-wrought plates in his studio in the Rue de Furstenberg at Paris (the street of which Whistler made a lithograph in 1894) has graduated at a famous university, traveled round the world, spent two years in commercial life, toiled as general reporter to a big daily paper, worked in a coal-mine, and acted as assistant cashier in a bank. And the tale of his years is only just over thirty, for he was born in 1878. Need I add--for an English reader it would be quite superfluous--that Mr. Webster is an American, with New York as his native city?

Mr. Webster came into the world with an innate love of art. In his school-days, before he had received any instruction in drawing, he made posters, that were perhaps crude but not ineffective, for the school games; and at Yale he was one of the editors and a valued illustrator of the _Yale Record_. This love of art was fostered by a visit to the 1900 Exposition at Paris, where the _genius loci_ has a stronger spell for the young artist than anywhere else upon earth. Studios and restaurants of the Quartier Latin are fragrant with great memories, still haunted by the mighty spirits of the past: Louvre and Luxembourg are filled with the living realities that abide. Amid the enchantment of this artistic atmosphere, with all its traditions and associations, Mr. Webster lingered for some months, and then set out on a trans-Siberian tour to the Orient, staying long enough in Japan and China for his natural instinct to be quickened by the marvelous art which has exerted so strong an influence on the Western world. On returning home his desire to adopt art as his life-calling was checked by family opposition. Here in England--for I write as one of Mr. Webster’s English admirers--many a boy artist has been thwarted by a foolish antipathy in the home circle to art in the abstract, but for a parent in the New World the conviction must be even more sincere that business is the only lucrative profession, while art is at least something precarious, if not a downward road to poverty and starvation. And so, at his father’s wish, Mr. Webster, in the office of the _Chicago Record-Herald_ and elsewhere, served two years of bondage to commerce. Determination, however, won its way at last, and in February, 1904, he set out to Paris with the family consent to “try it for a year.” That year is still continuing.

“His chief delight is in the nooks and corners of old-world thoroughfares and culs-de-sac, where deep shadows lurk in the angles of time-worn buildings, and sunlight ripples over crumbling walls, seamy gables, and irregular tiled roofs.” Martin Hardie.

Size of the original etching, 5½ × 3⅞ inches]

“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.

“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.

Size of the original etching, 7⅞ × 5⅛ inches]

“A fitting companion to this vision of Notre Dame is _Le Pont Neuf_, another of the etcher’s largest and most distinguished plates. The stern solidity of the bridge, with its massive masonry, its corbeled turrets, and its deeply shadowed arches, makes pleasing contrast with the irregular sky-line of the sunlit houses that rise beyond.” Martin Hardie.

Size of the original etching, 8⅛ × 11¾ inches]

It is of some of the chief works produced and exhibited during the last three years that I have now to speak, and in doing so may perhaps indicate a few leading characteristics of the etcher’s work. His chief delight is in the nooks and corners of old-world thoroughfares and culs-de-sac, where deep shadows lurk in the angles of time-worn buildings, and sunlight ripples over crumbling walls, seamy gables, and irregular tiled roofs. Of such is a series of subjects found in old Rouen--the _St. Ouen_; the _Rue du Hallage_, where the cathedral spire towers high above old timbered houses; and that charming plate with the title _Old Houses, Rouen_, a quaint corner of tenements whose high-pitched roofs stand propped against one another for all the world like a castle of cards. The etcher of this and of the _St. Ouen_ was welcomed with warm sympathy by the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, which said that “never before has there been so fervent and skilled an interpreter of the bowed timber and crumbling plaster of the old houses of Rouen, which line the street ending in the cathedral with its pointed spire against the open sky.” And so we pass to two courtyard scenes--belonging, like the Rouen subjects, to the year 1906--the _Cour, Normandie_, and _Les Blanchisseuses_. In both we find the artist becoming more adept in using broad and balanced disposition of light and shade to give not merely chiaroscuro but the suggestion of actual color, and more skilled in adding exquisiteness of detail to refined truth of visual impression. _Les Blanchisseuses_, in particular, with its rich mystery of shadow, with its sunshine falling on white walls and lighting the seamed interstices of plaster and timber, has an indefinable charm that, for myself at any rate, makes it a high-water mark in Mr. Webster’s art. Of similar type is the _Old Butter Market, Bruges_, where a cobbled street curves beneath a shadowed archway; and then for variety you step from _Bruges la Morte_, from the silent cobbles that centuries ago were a busy thoroughfare for ringing feet, to the Bruges of to-day. It is Bruges in a very different aspect, this free and spirited study made on July 27, 1907, on the day of the Fête de l’Arbre d’Or, giving a quick impression of gay holiday crowds, of banners fluttering against the open sky, and of the “belfry old and brown” whose carillon inspired America’s poet, as its tall form and fretted outline have inspired the American etcher of whom I write. This _Bruges en Fête_, and _Paysanne_, a clever and direct figure-study of an old peasant at Marlotte, come as an episode of pleasing variety in Mr. Webster’s work, and tend to show that, though he has his preferences, he is not really fettered by any limitation of subject or treatment.

“_La Rue Cardinale_ has affinity of general treatment with _Rue de la Parcheminerie_, and is not the less interesting for an amazing _tour de force_ in the rendering of color and texture in the striped blind over a shop-front.” Martin Hardie.

Size of the original etching, 10⅞ × 7⅝ inches]

“Closely akin to _Rue Brise Miche_ in restful balance of composition and in fine shadow effect is the _Rue de la Parcheminerie_--of special value now, for the old street has disappeared largely since the making of the plate.” Martin Hardie.

Size of the original etching, 11⅛ × 7 inches]

It is but natural that an artist of Mr. Webster’s temperament, a devoted admirer of Meryon, should become absorbed in Paris herself and endeavor to put upon copperplate the “poésie profonde et compliqué d’une vaste capitale.” The Bruges and Rouen plates showed Mr. Webster to be keenly susceptible to the magnetism and charm of medieval tradition, but Paris, steeped in sentiment even more than Rouen or Bruges, was to rouse a still greater warmth and feeling. He began by searching out those picturesque streets in the old quarters that have survived the wholesale demolishment of Baron Haussmann, a name hated by artists as that of Granger by lovers of books. The _Rue Brise Miche_ found its way to the Royal Academy, and was also honored by publication in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ (July, 1907). Closely akin to it in restful balance of composition and in fine shadow effect is the _Rue de la Parcheminerie_--of special value now, for the old street has disappeared largely since the making of the plate. _La Rue Cardinale_ has affinity of general treatment, and is not the less interesting for an amazing _tour de force_ in the rendering of color and texture in the striped blind over a shop-front. 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. Some day perhaps these loving studies of the old Paris of Balzac may be gathered in a series illustrating the “Quartier Marais,” and published in an _édition de luxe_ with descriptive text by the etcher. Let us hope that this may come to pass, for the buildings that Mr. Webster depicts are far more than a prosaic record of architectural features. There is a spiritual and human suggestiveness behind the mortar and bricks of his pictures: as a poet of his own nation has it, they are “latent with unseen existences.” He has appreciated the fact that etching--an art hedged in by limitations and depending upon power of suggestion--is the one art that can give at once those delicate lines, those broad shadows, those crumbling bits of texture. The lover of etching can regard his subject with indifference, and take full joy in the soft play of sunlight, the fine choice of line, the effective massing of light and shade.