DOI Heft:
No. 331 (October 1920)
DOI Artikel:Salaman, Malcolm C.: The etchings and dry-points of George Soper
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21401#0113
THE ETCHINGS AND DRY-POINTS OF GEORGE SOPER, R.E.
"FEEDING CATTLE," (1917). ETCH-
ING BY GEORGE SOPER, R.E.
On the other hand he is giving a new lead
in the matter of pictorial content for the
copper-plate in England. A very real in-
terest in the life of the country-side about
his Hertfordshire home draws him into
personal intimacy with the labourers of the
fields, and in the varied activities of the
agricultural life he finds pictorial motives
for his etching-needle or his dry-point.
Working with his sketch-book or his copper-
plate in the fields, with the tillers of the soil
active about him, he is able to invest his
plates with the actuality of the thing seen
and the true out-of-doors atmosphere.
He can never resist the pictorial appeal of a
horse, and, admirably as he can draw the
human figure, his graphic interest is, I
think, most sympathetically concerned
with the horse, primarily, the horse of
agricultural labour. In those two attractive
dry-points, Timber Hauling, Devon, and
Harrowing, with the first of which Mr.
Soper'may be said to have " arrived " as a
collector's etcher, we see how the artist has
enjoyed observing and portraying with ex-
98
pressive draughtsmanship the energy of
man and beast under the strain of their
daily toil; while in Beaver — signifying
locally the brief break-off for lunch—no
less faithfully has he etched, with an ex-
pression worthy of Paul Potter, two tired,
patient plough-horses restfully enjoying
the refreshment of their nose-bags while
the ploughman eats his own " snack." The
true etcher's suggestive economy of line,
each line carrying its pictorial freight of
significance, is properly Mr. Soper's ideal,
and he comes nearer to realising it with
artistic confidence in Feeding Cattle, 1917,
reproduced here. To have been a pupil of
Sir Frank Short without learning the prac-
tice of aquatint were to have wasted
valuable opportunity, and that is not Mr.
Soper's way. That he has gained an artistic
command of the medium he shows in The
Count, in which the interest is focussed in
the light of the shepherd's lantern on the
flock of sheep against the dark tones of the
night-shaded farm-buildings, making an
excellent aquatint motive, a a 0
"FEEDING CATTLE," (1917). ETCH-
ING BY GEORGE SOPER, R.E.
On the other hand he is giving a new lead
in the matter of pictorial content for the
copper-plate in England. A very real in-
terest in the life of the country-side about
his Hertfordshire home draws him into
personal intimacy with the labourers of the
fields, and in the varied activities of the
agricultural life he finds pictorial motives
for his etching-needle or his dry-point.
Working with his sketch-book or his copper-
plate in the fields, with the tillers of the soil
active about him, he is able to invest his
plates with the actuality of the thing seen
and the true out-of-doors atmosphere.
He can never resist the pictorial appeal of a
horse, and, admirably as he can draw the
human figure, his graphic interest is, I
think, most sympathetically concerned
with the horse, primarily, the horse of
agricultural labour. In those two attractive
dry-points, Timber Hauling, Devon, and
Harrowing, with the first of which Mr.
Soper'may be said to have " arrived " as a
collector's etcher, we see how the artist has
enjoyed observing and portraying with ex-
98
pressive draughtsmanship the energy of
man and beast under the strain of their
daily toil; while in Beaver — signifying
locally the brief break-off for lunch—no
less faithfully has he etched, with an ex-
pression worthy of Paul Potter, two tired,
patient plough-horses restfully enjoying
the refreshment of their nose-bags while
the ploughman eats his own " snack." The
true etcher's suggestive economy of line,
each line carrying its pictorial freight of
significance, is properly Mr. Soper's ideal,
and he comes nearer to realising it with
artistic confidence in Feeding Cattle, 1917,
reproduced here. To have been a pupil of
Sir Frank Short without learning the prac-
tice of aquatint were to have wasted
valuable opportunity, and that is not Mr.
Soper's way. That he has gained an artistic
command of the medium he shows in The
Count, in which the interest is focussed in
the light of the shepherd's lantern on the
flock of sheep against the dark tones of the
night-shaded farm-buildings, making an
excellent aquatint motive, a a 0