Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth CenturyBinyon, Laurence
History
Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century
Binyon, Laurence
Etchers -- Netherlands
Though an important figure in the history of landscape painting,
Ruisdael did not strongly influence the contemporary etchers of
landscape. Hobbema, his famous scholar, did not, so far as we know, etch
at all. A few etchers, however, felt Ruisdael’s stimulus more or less:
Van Beresteyn, who was working at Haarlem in 1644, and produced some
etchings somewhat in the manner of Ruisdael’s _Cornfield_, but with a
mannered treatment of trees: H. Naiwincx, who handled a delicate point,
and etched a set of graceful plates of woodland and river: and Adriaen
Verboom, who in his two or three etchings is perhaps more successful in
treatment of trees than any of the Dutchmen.
But more celebrated than any of these is Antoni Waterloo.
His etchings, to which alone he owes his reputation, are considerably
over a hundred in number; and as the subjects are monotonous, they soon
become tedious. Groups of trees by a roadside, or a fringe of wood alone
occupy Waterloo’s needle. Now and then, as in B. 28, the touch is light
and the effect pleasant: but having once found a formula, Waterloo is
content to repeat it. His foliage is hard and heavy.
[Illustration: _Fig. 18.--The Burnt House on the Canal. By Van der
Heyden._]
Roelant Roghman (1597-1686), though most of his plates are nominally
topographical, shows more feeling, if less skill. One set of plates by
him illustrates the Dutch postal system between the mother country and
the East Indies, and has therefore an historical interest.
But Roghman’s chief claim on our concern is that he was the faithful and
beloved friend of Rembrandt. His etchings, however, show no trace of
Rembrandt’s influence; and he was by ten years the elder man.
Like Seghers and like Ruisdael, Roghman was neglected and miserable in
his life, and died in an almshouse. One of his landscapes is in the
National Gallery.
VIII
The illustration on page 51 (Fig. 18) is from an etching which
represents a certain province of Dutch art, handled by several of the
painters with much success, but scarcely touched by the etchers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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