To CHARLES JACQUE, in the early “forties,” belongs the honor of having restored etching to its proper and legitimate place as a suggestive and linear art. His method is based on a thorough understanding of its limitations and qualities as exemplified by Rembrandt and his lesser contemporaries in Holland; and both by his work (he has left between five and six hundred plates) and by his influence, he is the father of the nineteenth century revival of etching, not only in France, where its possibilities were appreciated at once by the Romantic group and the “Men of 1830,” but in England, through Seymour Haden and Whistler. Charles Jacque was born in Paris on May 23, 1813, and to the last (he died at the ripe age of 81, in the year 1894) he retained, in country life, something of the city man’s point of view, the love of the “picturesque,” the anecdotic, in marked contrast to his greater contemporary, Jean-François Millet, whose few etchings form an epic of the soil even more powerful than his paintings. For all that, Jacque is a true etcher, working along the soundest lines and safest traditions. He is unequal: his work suffers at times from a hankering for “finish”; but at his best his little plates are delightfully suggestive, every line being there for a purpose, and not a line too much. Up to 1848 he had completed some three hundred etchings and dry-points, and it is among this group that many “masterpieces in little” are to be found. It would be hard to find a better model of style than the _Wheat Field_. The print is scarcely larger than a visiting card, but it conveys a sense of spaciousness and “out of doors” sadly lacking in many a painting in full color and of a hundred times its size. The _Truffle Gatherers_ is likewise of modest size, but the landscape with its leafless trees is full of air, and the sense of life and movement, as well as the effective composition of the “rooters” accompanied by their herdsman, is, from many points of view, unexcelled. The _Storm--Landscape with a White Horse_ is one of Jacque’s finest interpretations of wind and rough weather. This dry-point, unfortunately very rare, recalls the work of Rembrandt in his mature period. The sky, slashed with driving showers, the trees swayed this way and that by the gusty wind, the white horse with legs firmly braced, its mane and tail matted by the rain against its neck and flank, all combine to heighten and intensify the effect. Younger than Jacque by four years (he was born February 15, 1817), CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY differs from him in that it is the lyric, the spiritual aspect of nature, rather than the incidental and picturesque details of country life, which moved him. [Illustration: CHARLES JACQUE. STORM--LANDSCAPE WITH A WHITE HORSE Size of the original dry-point, 6⅜ × 8⅜ inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]