Studio: international art (51.1911)

Mr. Frank Short's Mezzotints

“the west’s good-night to the east

BY FRANK SHORT, A.R.A., P.R.E.

tinting. So important does Mr. Short regard this
question of etching as an aid to mezzotint that he
often uses aquatint “ lines ” when he thinks that a
hard etched or hard dotted line would insist too
definitely—an expedient of his own, in which, how-
ever, he finds he has been anticipated by some of
the most eminent among the old mezzotinters.

In this matter of etching with mezzotint Mr.
Short’s work upon Turner’s Liber Studiorum and
his other drawings has, of course, proved a liberal
education, and in the reproduction given here of
the famous Vta Mala, the etching which Mr. Short
copied exactly from Turner’s own in the extremely
scarce original plate, possibly mezzotinted also by the
painter’s own hand, can be clearly traced. Many
connoisseurs, by the way, regard this wonderful
Via Mala as Mr. Short’s masterpiece, at all events,
among those forty to fifty plates after Turner which
have associated his name imperishably with the
master’s, though some may possibly esteem the
Macon more highly. But if you ask Mr. Short
which of his mezzotints he himself considers his
greatest achievement, he will probably name A
Sussex Down, after Constable, for, in the interpre-
tation of that wonderful study of clouds sweeping
through a stormy sky over a wind-swept down, the

highest technical qualities were called for, the
depicting of forms, such as the clouds in this pic-
ture, presenting the greatest difficulties to mezzo-
tint. Technical difficulties, however, would appear
to be Mr. Short’s delight; he masters them
with such seeming ease. Look at the Woody
Landscape, after De Wint, how splendidly it
interprets the individual character of the master’s
vision! Then go to the Victoria and Albert
Museum, and, in the gallery of engraving, study
the copper-plate itself, and you will marvel at the
mastery of technique. Whether he be translating
the landscapes of Turner, De Wint, Constable,
Crome, David Cox, or Sir Alfred East—whose
romantic vision of The Cotswolds is one of Mr.
Short’s latest plates — whether he be repro-
ducing the great ideal compositions of G. F. Watts,
or Reynolds’ Two Goitlemen, or Vestier’s Princess
Lamballe, Mr. Short proves himself always a true
interpreter as well as a great engraver. And he
does so because his principle is right. “ I try to
lose the whole sense of the surface of the picture,”
he will tell you, “and see right through it, until
the thing it represents is as real as a piece of nature
in front of me. I never attempt to represent the
painter’s brush-work as brush-work, but, as com-

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