DOI Heft:
No. 340 (July 1921)
DOI Artikel:Finberg, Alexander Joseph: The etchings of F. L. Griggs
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21393#0031
THE ETCHINGS OF F. L. GRIGGS
PALACE FARM." BY
F. L. GRIGGS, R.E.
thing more strongly than ordinary people,
they also control their feelings better. It
is only the little men, the journeymen-
artists, like El Greco and Cezanne, who
tear a passion to very rags. The big men
are more concerned to control their passion
than to strut and bellow. That is why
their style is generally so restrained, so
curiously precise and felicitously truthful.
How admiraby these words describe the
style of Mr. Griggs's etchings, and what
better evidence could we have that he
belongs to the company of the great
artists i Like them he seems always to
work with his eye on the object, and it is
this objective outlook, this self-transcend-
ence, this recognition of something higher
and better than himself outside himself
which gives greatness and distinction to all
he does. So that though his works are
so temperate in statement, so deliberately
and carefully wrought, they yet move us
profoundly and leave their image stamped
sharply and for ever on our hearts. 0
I have said that Mr. Griggs draws with
his eye on the object, yet few of his etchings
deal directly with things seen only with the
outer eye. The unfinished dry-point of
Carnagh (1915) is one of these exceptions.
It is a magnificent rendering of the un-
tamed grace and wild grandeur of the
great trees—a kind of stately and sonorous
Pindaric ode to the old sylvan gods. Most
of his plates are imaginative reconstruc-
tions, in which the things seen with the
outer eye are mingled with visions seen
only with the inner eye. 000
Let us take the beautiful little plate of
Mortmain: It represents a small monastic
grange standing neglected in its old age.
Such sights are only too common in our
country, and to the selfish passer-by they
say and mean almost nothing. To a
romantic artist the building would have
been merely a promising theme to be
embellished with the picturesqueness of
decay. To Mr. Griggs it was interesting :'
first as a fine piece of pre-Renaissance
15
PALACE FARM." BY
F. L. GRIGGS, R.E.
thing more strongly than ordinary people,
they also control their feelings better. It
is only the little men, the journeymen-
artists, like El Greco and Cezanne, who
tear a passion to very rags. The big men
are more concerned to control their passion
than to strut and bellow. That is why
their style is generally so restrained, so
curiously precise and felicitously truthful.
How admiraby these words describe the
style of Mr. Griggs's etchings, and what
better evidence could we have that he
belongs to the company of the great
artists i Like them he seems always to
work with his eye on the object, and it is
this objective outlook, this self-transcend-
ence, this recognition of something higher
and better than himself outside himself
which gives greatness and distinction to all
he does. So that though his works are
so temperate in statement, so deliberately
and carefully wrought, they yet move us
profoundly and leave their image stamped
sharply and for ever on our hearts. 0
I have said that Mr. Griggs draws with
his eye on the object, yet few of his etchings
deal directly with things seen only with the
outer eye. The unfinished dry-point of
Carnagh (1915) is one of these exceptions.
It is a magnificent rendering of the un-
tamed grace and wild grandeur of the
great trees—a kind of stately and sonorous
Pindaric ode to the old sylvan gods. Most
of his plates are imaginative reconstruc-
tions, in which the things seen with the
outer eye are mingled with visions seen
only with the inner eye. 000
Let us take the beautiful little plate of
Mortmain: It represents a small monastic
grange standing neglected in its old age.
Such sights are only too common in our
country, and to the selfish passer-by they
say and mean almost nothing. To a
romantic artist the building would have
been merely a promising theme to be
embellished with the picturesqueness of
decay. To Mr. Griggs it was interesting :'
first as a fine piece of pre-Renaissance
15