Studio: international art (67.1916)

Etchings by Vaughan Trowbridge

American born in New York, but one might
almost call him a Parisian, as he left his New
York home and a business life in 1897 to study
art in Paris as a pupil of Jean-Paul Laurens and
Benjamin Constant, and Paris is now his home,
though exhibitions of his work are now and again
seen in his native land. Chiefly known by his line
and colour etchings he is nevertheless an able
painter, exhibiting from time to time in the Salons.
Etching, however, he has made his principal
medium of expression, and the fascinating charac-
teristic about him is that he is an artist. One
meets in one’s walk through life so many who
employ the mediums of the artist’s craft as a means
of livelihood, men who have industriously gained
a complete mastery of their materials, yet lack
that quality and character which alone can give
to their achievements an enduring value. Drawing
and Painting have been so systematised that
almost anyone can be trained to produce work
that will pass a prescribed standard and even
excel a little amidst an exhibition’s mass of medio-
crity. Fashion in technique and modes of mani-
pulating pencil and brush may and do change
periodically, meeting with applause whether the
work be good or bad, but Art throughout the ages
will always be Art and can never be bad, no matter
in what guise it does appear. Everyone of course
has his personal likes and preferences, but one
need not rush to close the door on those whose
work does not fall within the category.

To some etchers Trowbridge’s work may not
appeal, though amongst the genuine, who have
followed his output, I have found none who have
not recognised his sincerity and the artist behind
the work; and if amongst his many plates there is
found anything with which one might quibble on
technical or other grounds, the artist will be the
first to forestall criticism by pointing it out him-
self. His method of work is simple, and though
he has attained a unique success with his colour
etchings, all his plates have in the first place been
produced without any thought of painting in
colour. His first and only desire is to obtain
a good black and white print, which in line is
not only more rare but more difficult. He is an
emphatic worker from nature, taking always
his waxed plates with him into the open, and he
seldom, if ever, works from pencil sketches.

When satisfied with his line print, Mr. Trow-
bridge’s method of procedure in colour is to apply
a thoughtful scheme of crude general colour
masses to the plate, which he then passes through
the press, after which the plate is cleaned to a

certain extent and prepared for a neutral hue;
a second printing is then made and, thirdly,
the plate is washed in preparation for the darker
masses, whereupon the final printing takes place.
It will at once be seen that there is nothing ma-
chine-like or apt to be utilised commercially in his
method, as each completed print may be entirely
unlike another in colour result. His method
is one that leaves him free, by always having his
original line plate as a key, to use his ingenuity to
vary the colour effects ; as to the colour itself only
oil pigments are used and no retouching ones of
any kind, the artist relying entirely upon his care
in printing to gain the desired results. The prints
he has thus produced have had an uncommon
success, as is shown by the eagerness with which
they were claimed by various collectors from a
special exhibition of them some few years ago in
the Klackner Gallery, New York, and also the
interest they excited when shown in Messrs.
Tooth’s galleries in Paris.

It is, however, in his pure line black and white
prints that I think one will find the greater per-
sonality of the artist expressed. When I visited
him in Paris on his return from America, shortly,
after the closing of his exhibition, I was fortunate
in seeing a rare collection of what he might call his
neglected plates and prints made in Venice or in
Paris and its surrounding villages and provinces.
Amidst the whirring noise of watchful aeroplanes
hovering over the sunlit city his quaint old studio
was a rare haven of peace in which to spend a few
fugitive hours away from the turmoil of war and
sadness. There one could turn over virile little
prints of places devastated by great guns and be
glad that they had not found out other haunts of
artist and country lover. There was one of that
delightful ancient church St. Trophime, Arles, evok-
ing memories of the charming old town and that
eccentric artist, Vincent van Gogh; other and varied
memories would be aroused by prints such as the
peacefully designed Cour d’Albane, Rouen, The
Ancient Chapel of the Chartreuse, Avignon, the
Storm, Champagne sur Seine, reminding one of
gorgeous July storms that sweep over the city and
country, the Central Doorway, St. Mark's, Venice,
with its recollections of numerous other artists
who have found an alluring attraction for their
etching-needle in the same subject, and then,
lastly, his colour-print Bassin du Dragon, Ver-
sailles, which in its play of sunlight and shadow
brought forcibly to mind the sad associations of
military glory and the human wreckage of war with
which the place is now haunted.

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