Studio: international art (5.1895)

The Royal Society of Painter-Etchers

the few appreciate his strains. But the etcher's
choice must be deliberate, and will probably be
final.

As this is so, it is a satisfaction to note that at
the Exhibition of the Painter-Etchers—in which I
am forced to perceive the revelation of no new
genius—there is at least less and less of purely
popular work—of the large, the "soft," the over-
whelmingly elaborate and fussy—and more and
more of work done on the true artistic lines, whether
those are the lines of the frank sketcher in etching,
with his virtues of synthesis, of selection, of ab-
straction, like Mr. Short or Mr. Oliver Hall, or
whether they are the lines of the austere original
engraver, like Mr. Sherborn with his marvellous
book-plates, which carry on the tradition of Sebald
Behan and of Aldegrever, and like Mr. Charles
Holroyd, whose "Icarus series" is, in regard to
the method of its design, inspired by some masters
of the Renaissance in Italy.

Yes—that the direction in which they travel is a
good and a wholesome one is the best that can be
said of the painter-etchers this year ; nor is it a bad
thing to say. They strike out no fresh path, and
they achieve no unfamiliar triumph. Again, Mr.
Strang shows us his variety, and Mr. Short his
delicacy. Pessimistic in regard to the life that he
imagines—the Slaughter-house, for instance, and
the Hangman's Daughter—Mr. Strang permits
himself to be realistic with dignity in the field of
direct portraiture. Hence the admirable and in-
teresting successes of his etched portraits of Mr.
Reginald Cripps and of Justice Lindley. No one
quainter, no one more remote, than Vandyke has
had aught to do with inspiring them. Mr. Frank
Short, though Nature meant him to be an artist,

and would never in the end consent to be thwarted,
was brought up, I believe, to the craft of the
engineer, and it is old association, no doubt, that
counts for something, when this year he discovers
and makes plain to us what a wholly fascinating
object is a steam tramcar. He depicts one on a
road in Holland. It is seen from behind—the
boiler, taps, and pipes—and through the tunnel of
its arched roof, as it pounds along the road, there
is a glimpse of open country, and a windmill rising
against the sky. I think that plate Mr. Frank
Short's most individual, characteristic bit of work
this season ; but when I have said what it is, I
have by implication said already that it is not the
ordinary taste that it can hope to please.

The charm of mystery, the attraction of suggest-
iveness, is generally denied to Mr. C. J. Watson,
sound though his work always is, on which account
we welcome all the more in Rusting Amid Weeds,
the advent of a virtue somewhat novel to him, and
of which it seems he has not until now fully under-
stood the value. Just this virtue, just this essential
charm, is lacking, as it seems to me, to the forth-
right craftsmanship of Mr. D. Y. Cameron, of
which this year there is such abundant and capable
display. Within his proper limitations, he, like
Mr. Watson, is an accomplished artist. But he is
young and very earnest—a student always—and we
may hear at any time that his boundaries have
suddenly been widened. Now the charm of
reticence, 01 mystery, of the poetic hint, of the
something daintily and feelingly suggested beyond
the thing that is actually done—that charm belongs
to all the best, most characteristic work of Colonel
Goff, and we get it, at this year's Painter-Etchers,
in his plates of An Apple Tree and Pine Trees at

" CABANE DANS LES MARAIS

FROM AN ETCHING BY A. LEGROS

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