Four Masters of Etching

It is well to say, in a word or two, what this short book aims at. Unavoidably inferior to Mr. Hamerton’s in merit, it is voluntarily much more limited in scheme. Taking only the four artists who seem to me most worthy of note among the many good etchers of our day, it seeks to study their work with a degree of detail unnecessary and even impossible in a volume of wider scope. In trying to do this, it can hardly help affording, at least incidentally, some notion of what I hold to be the right principles of etching, nor can it wholly ignore the relation of etching to other art, or the relation of Art to Nature and Life. But these points are touched but briefly, and only by the way.

A book of larger aim, on Etching in England and France, might justifiably have given almost as much importance to Macbeth and Tissot here, and to Bracquemond there, as has been given in the annexed pages to Haden, Whistler, Jacquemart, and Legros. But Macbeth and Tissot belong to a younger generation than do any of my four masters. Much of what the art of etching could do in modern days was already in evidence before their work began. My four masters are four pioneers. Bracquemond may be a pioneer also; but in his original work, skilled and individual as that is, he has chosen to be very limited. The place he occupies is honourable, but it is small.

About the four chapters that here follow I need say very little. That on Seymour Haden has been passed through the Art Journal, that on Legros through the Academy, that on Jules Jacquemart through theNineteenth Century. All have now been revised. Something of the chapter on Whistler has also appeared in the Nineteenth Century, but in quite different form, and I will explain why. In the first place, since that article appeared, Mr. Whistler has given me cause to modify to some extent my estimate of his art. Having seen this cause, I have acted on it. I am not a Mede nor a Persian. And in a system of criticism which seeks to inquire and understand, rather than to denounce, there is place for change. Again, much of the article in the Nineteenth Century was occasioned not by Mr. Whistler’s practice, but by the attack which he made upon a great teacher and critic, and, by implication, upon all critics who allow themselves that abstinence from technical labour which is often essential if their criticism is to be neither immature for want of time to spend on it nor prejudiced because of their exclusive association with some special ways or cliques in art. Whatever dealt with this business I have now withdrawn. It was written for a particular purpose, and its purpose was served.