Engravers and Etchers: Six Lectures Delivered on the Scammon Foundation at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 1916Carrington, Fitz Roy
History
Engravers and Etchers: Six Lectures Delivered on the Scammon Foundation at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 1916
Carrington, Fitz Roy
Engraving -- History; Etching -- History
WHISTLER, “the greatest etcher and the most accomplished
lithographer who ever lived” (according to Mr. Joseph Pennell),
seems to have interested himself in landscape hardly at all. Not even
his most ardent disciples would assert that the master’s few purely
landscape plates contribute greatly to the pyramid of his fame. But
even here one must tread softly. _Whistlerium tremens_ is still a
highly contagious disease; and has not his official biographer written
“All his work is alike perfect”? How then may a modest lecturer presume
to praise or compare? Let Mr. Pennell speak: “Look at Rembrandt’s
prints made, I do not know whether with Amsterdam or Zaandam in the
background, and then at Whistler’s of the same subjects. Rembrandt drew
and bit and printed these little plates as no one had up to his time.
But Whistler is as much in advance of Rembrandt as that great artist
was of his predecessors. In these little distant views of absolutely
the same subject, Whistler has triumphed. It is not necessary to
explain how: you have only to see the prints to know it.... The older
master is conservative and mannered; the modern master, respecting all
the great art of the past, is gracious and sensitive, and perfectly
free.”
“You have only to see the prints to know it.” Well, let us look at
two of them: Rembrandt’s _View of Amsterdam_, of 1640, and Whistler’s
_Zaandam_. “Why drag in Velasquez?” the master of the gentle art of
making enemies is reported to have said, upon one historic occasion.
This time, so far as landscape etching is concerned, may it not be
Rembrandt’s turn to say, “Why drag in Whistler?”
LANDSCAPE ETCHING
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FINE PRINTS. _By Frederick Wedmore._ 15 illustrations. Edinburgh: John
Grant. 1905.
THE GREAT PAINTER-ETCHERS FROM REMBRANDT TO WHISTLER. _By Malcolm C.
Salaman. Edited by Charles Holme._ 191 illustrations. London, Paris,
New York: The Studio. 1914.
FOUR MASTERS OF ETCHING. [Haden, Jacquemart, Whistler, Legros.] _By
Frederick Wedmore._ Original etchings by Haden, Jacquemart, Whistler,
and Legros. London: Fine Art Society. 1883.
DUTCH ETCHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. _By Laurence Binyon._ 4
reproductions and 29 text illustrations. London: Seeley & Co. 1895.
(Portfolio Artistic Monographs. No. 21.)
ALTDORFER, ALBRECHT (c. 1480-1538)
ALBRECHT ALTDORFER. _By T. Sturge Moore. Edited by Laurence Binyon._
25 illustrations. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.; London: The Unicorn
Press. 1901.
ALBRECHT ALTDORFERS LANDSCHAFTS RADIERUNGEN. _Edited by Max J.
Friedländer._ 9 reproductions and 1 text illustration. Berlin: Bruno
Cassirer. 1906. (Graphische Gesellschaft. Publication 3.)
ALBRECHT ALTDORFER AND WOLF HUBER. _By Hermann Voss._ 160
reproductions on 63 plates. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann. 1910.
(Meister der Graphik. Vol. 3.)
GELLÉE, CLAUDE, called LORRAIN (1600-1682)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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