Print collector's quarterly (4.1914)

SOME FRENCH ETCHERS AND
SONNETEERS

By WILLIAM ASPENWALL BRADLEY
Author of “ Meryon and Baudelaire,” “ Charles Meryon, Poet,” “ Maxime
Lalanne,” etc.


RITING in 1862 of that revival of etching
which his own appreciation of Meryon and
other Contemporary etchers did so much to
promote, Charles Baudelaire expressed his

belief that this art would never become really populär,

although he admitted that he might be a bad prophet
and hoped that he would prove so. Time, however, has
fully justified his vaticination, and to-day it is more
clearly understood than ever before, that the personal,
and therefore aristocratic, element, which the French
poet and connoisseur correctly feit to be of the very

essence of etching, must of necessity limit its appeal
and forever keep it the favored medium of the few
rather than of the many. Yet, at the precise moment,
any one less perspicacious than he might well have been
pardoned for a far more optimistic outlook. Never, in all
its history had etching appeared more likely to achieve
popularity than when Baudelaire was writing his little
articles, Peintres et Aqua-fortistes, and L’Eau-forte est d
la mode. As the latter title indicates, the art of the
needle had already become the vogue among the more
cultured classes of Parisian society, and this tended to

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