International studio (21.1903/1904(1904))

ETCHING BY MATTHEW MARtS

Perhaps it is in his etchings that the strength of
his conviction can be best appreciated. In a
branch of art practice which depends essentially
upon the distribution of lines and the ordering of
subtleties of tone gradation, and does not appeal to
the populär craving for prettiness of colour, he has
had necessarily to make his Statement with niore
simplicity and more reserve than in his exercises in
painting, He has had to abandon some of what
may be considered as essentiais of his art, and to
narrow his achievement within well-defined limits.
Yet under such restrictions he has lost none of his
purity of Sentiment, and has diminished not at all
the sincerity of his mysticai creed. In his figure-
subjects there is the same mixture of sensuousness
and severity, the same iove of large, rounded forms,
and the same insistence upon a physical type of
his own choosing. In his landscapes there is
in evidence his accustomed seeking after atmo-
spheric mysteries and poetic rehnements of the
actualities of natural scenes. Little is asserted, but
there is infinite Suggestion of the richness of nature's
detail and of the exquisite tenderness of diffused

light which veils and softens all parts of the land-
scape and brings the whole subject into perfect
harmony. Although at first sight his method in
etching seems vague—almost accidental, indeed—
it will be seen, if his plates are properly examined,
to be controlled by the justest understanding. The
pervading tone is not a kind of shroud which con-
ceals the variety of form and the play of light and
shade needed to give shape to the scene ; it is so
minutely modulated, so full of delicacy and tender
gradation, that it becomes almost luminous in
quality, and through it, the more closely the plate
is examined, appear more clearly the many details
which the artist himself has seen. Such art is
essentially not for the ordinary man. Its imagina-
tive conception puts it beyond the reach of the
commonplace mind, and its romanticism makes it
difhcult of comprehension by the individual whose
ideas are bounded by present-day conventions.
But the thinker, the man of poetic temperament,
the lover of things which are not simply superficial,
cannot fail to respond to the subtle attractiveness
of such work as Matthew Maris has produced.
207