International studio (16.1902)

Frank Short, R.E.

well as in volume, to some extent suffered by the
obligations of the accepted, even though it may
have been the welcome and the congenial, task.
But I think, in cases like Frank Short’s, there is
advantage as well as disadvantage in this double
work. It might have been otherwise had Frank
Short, like Wenceslaus Hollar, drudged on at
a starvation wage. Yet even Hollar, for all
h.is poverty, the arduousness of his labour, bis
death in insufficient fame and with noble toil
unrequited, did gain something, I take it, by
the fact that he was not always called upon
to create—that he had at least such measure of
rest as change of occupation ensures. Most of us
who play on more than a single string, know
something of the advantage of the transition.
The artist—whether writer, actor, painter, etcher—
who lives to please, as the old phrase has it, “must
please, to live.” Frank Short has pleased first
himself. As for the public, whether they bear, or
whether they forbear, is not at present an important
matter. Time is on the side of all work that is
executed with conscience, and executed with style.
Style is “ the great antiseptic.” There is no
parade of style whatever—there are directness,
simplicity, economy of means—in the original
etchings of Frank Short. But there is Style, none

the less, in the very simplicity, the moderation, the
personal impression unswervingly recorded, the
recognition of the limitations of the individuality,
and of the limitations of the medium employed.
And here I may profitably remind the reader that
Frank Short is in the habit of addressing himself to
no less than five methods in original performance.
He chooses for the given subject the method that
can best express it. The five methods are Soft-
ground, and true Etching, and Drypoint, and Aqua-
tint, and Mezzotint. And if a subject interests him
for its lines he does not choose Mezzotint, and if a
subject interests him by its masses he does not
choose Etching.
It may be that one does more service by point-
ing out a fact of this sort—which shows the spirit
of the artist, his proper alertness to perceive the
requirements of his theme—than by establishing
comparisons between Mr. Short and some other
artist, or comparisons between this and that work
of his own—an endeavour to weigh relative merits.
Mr. Short has not, of course, the supreme and
various grace of a Whistler, or the intensity of a
Meryon—the depth of his sombre poetry—or the
grim earnestness, the unrelenting and fruitful per-
tinacity, of a Cameron. But he has his own gentler
poetry; his cheerful pleasure in picturesque line;


“THE angler’s BRIDGE ON THE WAN'DLE

FROM AN ETCHING BY FRANK SHORT, R. F..

IO