The Golden Age of Engraving: A Specialist's Story about Fine Prints by Frederick Keppel

Author:Frederick Keppel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Baker & Taylor company
Published: 1910-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

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CARDIGAN BRIDGE Siz« of the original print, ii by 6 inc

NEWCASTLE IN EMLYN

Size of the original print. 4j by 6 inches.

From the etchings by Seymour Haden. These two plHtes and three otiten of

similnr subjects were etehed in one Hay, August 17. I8W. Though not amoDg

the rare plates, they are among the finest from the standpoint of artistic quality.

It is that I may have said too much about Seymour Haden the man, and not enough about Seymoiu" Haden the artist. As to his art, wiser heads than mine have expoimded it and will^go on expounding it in the time to come; and I am only one of the many who believe that these etchings of his are to be included in the permanently great art work of the nineteenth century.

But for my own part, if I speak of him at all, I must speak as I feel, and I cannot make my words impersonal and abstract; and (to quote what Shakespeare makes Mark Antony say of his friend Julius Caesar):

'That they know full well

That gave me public leave to speak of him/

It is because I have known Seymour Haden long and well, and because there is no man living for whom I have a greater regard or a higher esteem.

SIR SEYMOUR HADEN

PAINTER-ETCHER

Reprinted, by permission, from "The Outlook

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IN writing of a celebrity who has already been much written about, it is sometimes not easy to avoid the "rethreshing of old straw"; but even admitting this, we must also admit that very much depends upon the particular sort of straw we may be threshing.

Among the makers of pictures some artists yield us their little all, very quickly, while others may be compared to certain mines where the precious ore is almost inexhaustible, and where the more you delve the more you get.

In any creative art — whether it be pictures or poetry or music or fiction — it often happens that the shallow and adroit practitioner wins his reward more quickly and more largely than does his profounder and more original brother. The former is like a bird that sings one little song. His message is obvious and is quickly imderstood of all; while the truly original and creative artist brings a message so unusual, so unheard of, that it is at first like Saint Paul's new doctrine — "to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness." Still another thing which militates against the immediate success of the artist of

real originality is that he never repeats himself; each picture is a new problem worked out in a new way, and it never is a disguised repetition of some former success of his. In speaking thus I by no means intend to intimate that, in art, what is clear and obvious is bad, while what is obscure and hard to understand is good. Indeed, I believe that obscurity — which is not profundity— is my "pet aversion.** Furthermore, Seymour Haden is not obscure, yet it took him many years to win recognition.

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