International studio (42.1910)

Mr. Frank Short's Mezzotints

"EBB TIDE, PUTNEY BRIDGE" (FINISHED STATE) BY FRANK SHORT, A.R.A., P.R.E.

(By permission of Mr. Robert Dunthorne)

which is reproduced here in both its " states "—
does not this river nocturne seem to call for mez-
zotint before every other method ? Yet I doubt if
there be any engraver but Mr. Short who, taking
his grounded copperplate out into the night,
could have scraped, direct from nature, such
a picture of this quiet, solemnly lovely river-scene
just as it presented itself to his vision, carrying it
as far as we see it in the first " state " of the plate,
with the water apparently quite black, and
the shadows and silhouettes of almost unrelieved
darkness, yet conveying all the suggestion of the
scene's poetry and mystery. Mr. Short finished
the plate in his studio, and in the final " state "
we have all the effects of light asserting themselves
among the shadows, producing infinite grada-
tions of tone, and bringing the forms into less
abrupt relations with their surroundings. Here
the last glow of sunset, " palely loitering," softly
defines the buildings ; lights and reflections
vivify the river ; the barge seems to come away
from the old wooden bridge, over which the
derrick, like the hand of fate, is seen ready for its
work upon the new bridge.

Now, here we have mezzotint used with 'the

most artistic adaptation of its technique to the
pictorial impression in a way that none of the
earlier masters ever thought to use it; while even
Sir Seymour Haden, master as he was of his
etching needle, was not sure enough of the
medium to attempt his charming landscape
mezzotints direct from nature, without preliminary
drawings. But when nature is singing to Mr.
Short one of her tender songs of twilight or
of moonrise, he instinctively takes up his mezzo-
tint scraper, careful to have some twenty or thirty
others ready to his hand, all freshly sharpened,
knowing that a few minutes' work upon the
rocked copper will dull their fine edges. So again,
in Per Horse-poiver per Hour—reminiscent in its
prosaic title of Mr. Short's earlier engineering
days—we have one of those subjects seen but mo-
mentarily, the artistic impression being conveyed
to the copper with happy spontaneity and com-
pleteness of effect. Just a steam-tug stoking up
in Whitby Harbour, making, with the ascending
cloud of black smoke, a dark central interest amid
the reflecting waters, on which a Whitby " mule "
is sailing seaward, and against the harbour build-
ings losing themselves in the dusk of evening.

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