Only a poet could have conceived a plate like the “Stryge,” that evil figure on Notre Dame, surveying the vast field of his conquests. [Illustration: SUNSET IN IRELAND Sir Seymour Haden] [Illustration: THE DOORWAY. VENICE James McNeill Whistler] [Illustration: LE PETIT PONT Charles Meryon] * * * * * As we survey the reproductive processes, they are drawn, one and all, into the current of new, original expression. Innovators appear even in the conservative camp of engraving; Ferdinand Gaillard, for instance, an _engraver_, in that he _uses_ the graver, though he uses it in a manner to him particular, expressive of minutest detail. “My aim,” he says, “is not to charm but to be truthful. My art consists in saying all.” And he expresses “all” in this wonderful portrait of Dom Prosper Guéranger. No detail has escaped him in his scrutiny of this strong, bright face with its searching, clear eyes. A counterpart of Gaillard--a painter-engraver similarly minute and precise with his burin--is Stauffer-Bern, a Swiss of German training. [Illustration: DOM PROSPER GUÉRANGER Ferdinand Gaillard] [Illustration: GIRL BATHING Anders Zorn] [Illustration: EXPULSION FROM PARADISE From “Eva und die Zukunft.” Max Klinger] Now, if we compare a print of the early times with the technical creations of our present day, we cannot but realize the increased demands made upon the artist. The phenomena of light must be ever studied anew, in the endeavor to attain new, effective, convincing ways of expression--not merely of color and form as heretofore, but of atmosphere, of light, of vibrating, living, I had almost said “moving,” nature. Hence impressionism; hence, also, daring experiments like this girl bathing, by Anders Zorn, the Swedish painter-etcher. Here is a distinct _outdoor_ feeling; the breeze and sun, the modeling of rock, and the softly rounded nude body against its hard face. Everything is done with long, slashing strokes, with hardly any definite outline; a wonderful display of skill. Another illustration, the “Expulsion from Paradise,” by that German master of many arts, Max Klinger, shows us an effect of most intense expression of light in the glaring foreground, where a merciless sun beats down on the first couple: a world all the more arid by contrast with the cool, shady woodland behind the huge, guarded gateway. The nearer we approach to the present day, the more difficult, even painful, becomes the work of selection; painful because of the many gems barred from inclusion by the necessary restriction of space. A longer review, including men like Lalanne, Legros, Lepère, Schmutzer, Gevger, Munch, Liebermann, Bone, Cameron, Bauer, would needs have to include many others, and disproportionately swell this closing chapter.