DOI Heft:
Nr. 211 (October 1910)
DOI Artikel:Salaman, Malcolm C.: The mezzotints of Mr. Frank Short, A.R.A., P.R.E.
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20971#0027
Mr. Frank Short's Mezzotints
Turner might have conceived this, and made it
no finer.
Another poetic vision of Whitby Harbour is
The West's Good night to the East, in which the
tender mystery of sunset and twilight, enveloping
the indefinite forms of boats and buildings, is
expressed through exquisite delicacies of tone.
What mezzotint can do in a master’s hands for the
original presentment of moonlight on the sea is
triumphantly proved in Moonrise, Ramsgate, if
indeed any further proof were needed after that
exquisite plate, The Weary Moon, which floats
delightfully into memory. This Ramsgate is a
thing of perfect beauty, full of enchanting effects
of light and shade in sea and shore and sky. The
spacious Nithsdale shows Mr. Short’s application
of mezzotint to a scene that he might, perhaps,
have interpreted with equal, yet different, effect
through the more reticent medium of his etching-
needle. Here the broad river-spaces, which the
etching-needle would leave unfilled, are suggested
by the shore-lines, but they are filled with the
subtle interest of tones, while the lines are
accentuated by etching.
Mr. Short believes firmly in etching as an aid to
mezzotint, and in this he is, of course, at one with
Turner and manyof the eighteenth-century masters;
but his own practice is based on principles drawn
from experience. He never knows, when he starts
upon a mezzotint plate, how he is going to treat
it as regards etching. For figures he never uses
etched lines, but, if in landscape he feels that
definiteness of form is needed, he will give the
requisite accent with either hard etched lines or
soft dotted lines, using these latter only to suggest
forms that are to be partially lost in light and atmo-
sphere. For instance, in the plate upon which he
is now engaged, Turner’s Coblentz to Ehrenbreit-
stein—made more famous by Ruskin’s analysis of
its composition—Mr. Short is suggesting the whole
drawing by delicate broken lines, since hard etching
would over-accentuate the subject for the mezzo-
Turner might have conceived this, and made it
no finer.
Another poetic vision of Whitby Harbour is
The West's Good night to the East, in which the
tender mystery of sunset and twilight, enveloping
the indefinite forms of boats and buildings, is
expressed through exquisite delicacies of tone.
What mezzotint can do in a master’s hands for the
original presentment of moonlight on the sea is
triumphantly proved in Moonrise, Ramsgate, if
indeed any further proof were needed after that
exquisite plate, The Weary Moon, which floats
delightfully into memory. This Ramsgate is a
thing of perfect beauty, full of enchanting effects
of light and shade in sea and shore and sky. The
spacious Nithsdale shows Mr. Short’s application
of mezzotint to a scene that he might, perhaps,
have interpreted with equal, yet different, effect
through the more reticent medium of his etching-
needle. Here the broad river-spaces, which the
etching-needle would leave unfilled, are suggested
by the shore-lines, but they are filled with the
subtle interest of tones, while the lines are
accentuated by etching.
Mr. Short believes firmly in etching as an aid to
mezzotint, and in this he is, of course, at one with
Turner and manyof the eighteenth-century masters;
but his own practice is based on principles drawn
from experience. He never knows, when he starts
upon a mezzotint plate, how he is going to treat
it as regards etching. For figures he never uses
etched lines, but, if in landscape he feels that
definiteness of form is needed, he will give the
requisite accent with either hard etched lines or
soft dotted lines, using these latter only to suggest
forms that are to be partially lost in light and atmo-
sphere. For instance, in the plate upon which he
is now engaged, Turner’s Coblentz to Ehrenbreit-
stein—made more famous by Ruskin’s analysis of
its composition—Mr. Short is suggesting the whole
drawing by delicate broken lines, since hard etching
would over-accentuate the subject for the mezzo-