take. You have thrown all your money have improved your character! May I right and left. May I hope that this view venture to ask who she is?" will be lasting?"

tion-and then of Joachim's artistic individuality: firmness at will, a resolute self-control, minute exactness, and then, suddenly, and but for an instant, the divine indecision which is the last expression of supreme mastery, because it is the sign that creator and interpreter are fused into one. But there may be other causes than the one I have suggested for that which, define it how we will, seems lacking to Vandyke. Perhaps not in etching only - that process without precedents - is be something less than he might have been. As a painter, the highest examples were before him. But did he fully profit by them?

complement of the art of mezzotinting., between certain musicians: think of the The mezzotinter works by spaces, the precision of Arabella Goddard - that etcher by lines. And Turner, in the most faultless, measured, restrained interpretainteresting and most important of his serial works, the Liber Studiorum, effected that marriage of the two arts which, strange to say, has never been repeated. He etched the leading lines of his studies, and mezzotint, executed sometimes under his own supervision and sometimes by his own hand, accomplished the rest. Yet one does not class him among the great etchers, because he only used etching to perform that which by the other process could not have been performed at all. He etched with immense precision and power all that he meant to etch; but he reserved his effects the things for which he cared for the other art. That alone clothed the skeleton, and visibly embodied the spirit of each picture. But when one speaks of the great etchers, one speaks of those who gave to their art a wider field, and claimed from it a greater result. They too, like Turner, worked by lines, but their lines were a thousand to his one; for they were the end as well as the beginning they made the picture, and did not only prepare for it.

The work of the great etchers was usually speedy. Their minds had other qualities than those of the line engravers. On the one side there was quiet intelligence, patience, and leisurely attention to detail; on the other, rapid sympathy, instinctive recognition, and either a vehement passion for the thing beheld and to be drawn, or else, at the least, a keen delight in it. The patience and leisure were for Marc Antonio, the passion was for Rembrandt, the delight for Claude.

He is born in 1599- the son of traders who are wealthy and early showing signs of his particular ability, he has no difficulty in entering the studio of Rubens. That master much appreciates him. The youth gives still increasing promise; and he is well advised in early manhood to set out for Italy, so that he may study the treasures of Venice, Florence and Rome. But he has not passed out of his native Flanders before he is enamoured of a young country girl. He wavers. The love of her detains him many months. He is quite happy, painting the portraits of her kinsmen. He has forgotten Italy. Remonstrance on remonstrance comes from Rubens, and it is thanks to this persistence that he finally sets forth. There is then a five years' absence. No absence so long was ever less fruitful in direct influence; and now he is busy at Antwerp. In 1632 he It is perhaps because Vandyke was by travels to England, hoping for greater a very few years the earliest of the etch-gain than work in his native city affords ; ers save Albert Dürer, whose greatest achievements were all in a different art that one finds in many of his prints a poverty of means, never indeed to be confused with weakness or with failure, but tending now and then to lessen the effect and meaning of his work. He was a genuine etcher: there was never a more genuine. But if you think of him with Rembrandt and with Claude-the two great masters who in point of time were ever so little behind him there comes perhaps to your mind some thought of the diligent schoolboy whose round-hand and whose large-hand are better than his teacher's, but who can write only between those rigid lines which for himself the teacher would discard. Or, if that simile appear offensive, think of the difference]

and he is early patronized by the king, by
the Lords Strafford and Pembroke, and
by Sir Kenelm Digby, whose wife's por-
trait (she was the Lady Venetia Stanley)
he paints four times. He does not neg-
lect his work, but he does not feed and
enrich his faculty. He is amiable, no
doubt; he is dashing and brilliant too.
But it does not occur to any one to say
that he is wise. He dresses lavishly. In
the matter of display he attempts an un-
reasonable rivalry with the wealthiest of
the nobles - runs that race which an artist
rarely wins, and then wins only at the
price of a fatal injury. Vandyke keeps
an open house for his friends-
purse for his mistresses.* And in due

an open

One of these - Margaret Lemon-appears, says

time he finds he is impoverished-not would have left to be unnoticed, or would destitute, indeed, nor living meanly, but not even have carried with it at all, is shorn of many of his delights. He is very plainly apparent. A sky is hard advised to marry, and there is found for and wooden; a background is artificial. him the daughter of an eminent physician Where is the tonality which would have - Maria Ruthven is her name. With been given by the more complete master? her, in 1640, he goes to Flanders and to On the whole, then, it is possible that France, hoping that Louis Treize will Vankyke is best when he sketches. The employ him in the decoration of the lines of the figure, the lines of the face, Louvre, and stirred probably by the am- this and that trait of character, generally bition to do higher work than portrait true, yet generally not far below the surpainting. But Nicholas Poussin is en- face-all this Vandyke can render rapidgaged before Vandyke puts in his claim, ly and readily—a clear thought, not a and Vandyke must return to England, profound one, expressed with an accurate though English air, in the world of poli- hand. Here is a cloak set as gracefully tics and fashion, is thick with a coming as Mr. Irving's in the play. Here is a trouble. Sir Anthony is ill-ill and bearing as manly-but it is more the unhopeful and though the king is so manner than the man. Here, too, is a far interested in the court-painter as to suggestion of a collar of lace. How well offer naïvely a gratuity of three hundred that lies on the broad shoulders! Somepounds to the physician who can save his times the mind is seized as well as the life, neither royal interest nor medical raiment. The portrait of Snellinx has skill is of any long avail, and Sir Anthony infinite rough vigour. This man was a dies on the 9th day of December, 1641 - painter of battles-there is battle in his the day of the baptism of his newly-born eye and in his firm right hand. Will you child. That child Maria Ruthven's see a contented countenance; a mind at is not his only child; for in the will made rest, with no thought of a pose; a gracebut a few days before his death there is ful head, with long and black disordered pathetic mention of "my daughter be-hair; a calm intelligence, in eyes and yond sea:" and one can fancy that with that wife beside him whom friends had persuaded him to marry, so that his life might be quieter, he, "weake of body, yet enjoying his senses, memorie, and understandinge," thinks somewhat of the long past pleasure days-the bright beginning, in contrast with this end.

mouth? Look, then, at Paul Pontius, the Antwerp engraver. He is a worthy gallant, standing there, with visible firm throat, stout arm, and dexterous hand. The collar's lace-work makes the firm throat yet more massive by its contrast: the many-folded garment hides nothing of the plain line of that rounded, stalwart Mr. W. H. Carpenter, who has cata-arm. There is no date engraved upon logued his etchings, assigns to him but the plate, and none is positively known twenty-four. No less than twenty of for the man's birth or death; but on an these are portraits of men. But Mr. early impression in the Museum PrintCarpenter "does not feel justified in Room I see written by a German hand, omitting thirteen other etchings, chiefly" Paulus Pontius, geboren 1603," and one of sacred and allegorical subjects." With takes the portrait to be that of a man these, in this paper, we have nothing to close upon seven-and-twenty. It was do. etched, therefore, in the prime of Vandyke, in 1630, or thereabouts - a year or two before he settled in England.

The practical etcher will praise Vandyke for the frankness and simplicity of his work; for an economy of labour which up to a given point shows only as artistic excellence, and is the proof of knowledge and power. Yet again, it is carried sometimes too near to meagreness, and the praise needs must stop. Does the artist, on the other hand, seek to avail himself to the full of the resources of his art?-then some fault of conception or execution which slighter work

an authority, "to have been a woman of much notoriety." There are prints after one of the portraits which Vandyke painted of her, by Hollar, Gaywood, Lommelin, and Morin.

For pure etching, nothing is finer or more spirited than the print of Antonius Cornelissen, the burly, middle-aged, and rich "collector." And yet one turns away from all with no other impression than that which was formed almost at the beginning. Surely, one says, in the company of artists Vandyke is motioned to too great a place. Technical qualities apart, the value of his work as an etcher is precisely that of his work as a painter. There is the same mind in it - that, and no more—a mind courtier-like, refined, chivalrous, observant, thoughtful at inter

with increasing celebrity Ostade pursues his labour until old age is well upon him. He dies in Amsterdam in 1685, aged seventy-five, leaving, in addition to some three-hundred highly-finished pictures, many drawings which were done, it is believed, as much for pleasure as for studies of his more arduous works, and fifty etch

vals; yet not of the highest at any point; neither the noblest nor the keenest, nor even near to these. Deducting here and there a great exception such as that grave and gracious Sir Kenelm Digby, in the billiard-room at Knole - his subjects, as he has represented them, are not free from the suspicion of "posing." There is little intensity in his artistic tempera-ings in which most of the characteristics ment; little real appreciation of beauty, or of the truest force. A touch of affectation has no repugnance for him. His works in the main seem wanting in the unerring directness, the unerring strength of a great man's message sent forth from mind to mind.

II.

of his paintings are reproduced with a dexterity, a mastery of manner, which, whatever be the change of fashion and of culture, will insure for him high rank, as one among the few great etchers.

An accomplished and often sympathetic critic, who has made of etching his particular study, has been unusually severe upon the work of Ostade: not, of course, ROUGHLY speaking, all our great etch-upon its technical merits-respecting ers were contemporaries; and while Van- which severity itself must give way to addyke was a child, there was born, at Lü-miration but upon the sentiment that beck, Adrian van Ostade. Particulars of it expresses by touches so direct, keen, his life are not abundant, and if we may unmistakable. Composition and chiarojudge both from that little which has de- scuro, perfect as the subjects selected can scended to us of his story and from the possibly give scope for these two great cold and cynical observant face which qualities Mr. Hamerton allows in Ostade's makes the frontispiece to his collection of work. But the sentiment he finds wholly etchings, they would not bear with them repulsive: repulsive from end to end. any dramatic interest. His life is in his The condemnation, though true enough work, and his work is great in quantity in the main, is certainly a little too sweepand in such qualities as are technical. ing. It is true-need I repeat? — of He came, when very young, to Haerlem, much of his work of much even of that to study under Franz Hals was the fel- which is technically the best. In the low pupil and intimate friend of Brauwer" Tavern Dance" and in "Rustic Court-and in the city of his adoption he soon found ample and remunerative labour. As years passed on, his success and reputation became more general and distinguished, and it is not likely that he would ever have quitted Haerlem, had not difficult times loomed in sight.

ship," "the males pursue the females; " while in "The Family," ,"" the female gives suck to her young." It is all animal. And yet a sentiment quite other than this is now and again conveyed; and in enumerating these pieces, one should not forget those others -how, for instance, in Alarmed at the approach of French" The Painter " the calm pursuit of labour troops, in 1662, he prepares to leave Hol- for labour's sake is well expressed; how land and return to his own land. He in "The Spectacle-Seller" a rustic or sells his pictures and effects with this intention, and gets as far as Amsterdam, whence he will embark for Lübeck. But in Amsterdam he is well received his fame has gone before him — and an amateur called Constantine Senneport prevails on him to be his guest. The new friend explains to Ostade the advantages of remaining in a town so great and rich; and Ostade, with whom love of country held, we may be sure, a very secondary place when love of money had any need to clash with it, is soon persuaded to stay. In Amsterdam, therefore, his easel is set up; his works are purchased with avidity-they are ordered even more promptly than with all his perseverance they can be executed—and

*

suburban incident is depicted with point and simplicity. There is nothing animal in "The Knife-Grinder;" it is a little bourgeois scene of no elevation, but of easily recognized truth. In the "Peasant Family saying Grace" there is even a little spirituality, a homely but genuine piety; though the types are poor, with no natural dignity-the father as unintelligent and sheep-like a parent as ever fostered his young, and accepted without struggle or questioning a life of the dullest monotony. Again, in the "Peasant paying his Reckoning" -the finest and most fascinating, I should say, of Os

Goethe may be seen in "Goethe and Mendelssohn," 2nd Edition, p. 70.

How this spiritually struck the refined mind of

tade's smaller plates it is not the dull | Netherlands life have enabled him to bliss of boazing that is primarily thought keep and cultivate. Thus, in "La Fête of, dwelt upon, or presented, but rather sous la Treille" we have some charm of the whole scene of this interior-paying open-air life, much movement, some vipeasant who fumbles for the coin, and vacity, and here and there a gleam of watchful hostess, and still abiding guests. grace. In the group of "The Charlatan" How good is the space: how good the there is some dramatic interest, and accessories!-the leisure, how delight- there are characters more varied than he ful! It is a tavern indeed, but somehow is wont to present. But as we have seen glorified by art. For accurate delicacy of him in his interiors alive to the pictu perception, for dexterous delicacy of exe- resqueness of litter-sprawling brush cution, what is there that surpasses this? and pot and saucer, and strewn cards But do you, on the other hand, wish to upon the floor-so let us take leave of see work which shall abundantly confirm him in recognizing that he was alive also Mr. Hamerton's opinion of Ostade-al- to the picturesqueness of Nature, when ready partly justified, as I have indicated, that was shown in little things of quite by "The Family," "Rustic Courtship," familiar appearance, and alive too, now and the "Tavern Dance," then you and again, to such picturesqueness as will turn to the pieces numbered 13 and men can make. The last he proves by 50 in the catalogue of Bartsch. The first the care and thought and delicacy he of these is called "The Smokers:" it bestows on the often prominent quaint represents three men, one of whom sits lines of diamond-patterned casements; upon a turned-up cask. Chiaroscuro is and the first, by the lightness and sensigood, and grouping is good; and that is tiveness of his touch when he draws the all. There is as little subject for the leaf and tendril of the vine by the housemind as beauty for the eye; there is wall, as it throws its slight cool shadow nothing of the character with which on the rustic bench, or curls waywardly Meissonier endows such a scene. The into the now open window, through second represents an interior with many which there glances for a moment (brief peasants, of whom some are children and indeed in Ostade's life!) a little of the the rest of mature years. They are all happy sunshine of De Hooghe. delighting in and commending to each other this drink and that-this and that savoury mouthful that fitly crowns with sensual jollity the labour of the day.

Securæ reddamus tempora mensæ
Venit post multos una serena dies.

Take Adrian van Ostade out of doors, and he is a little better. In open air, somehow, he is less grossly animal. Not that in presence of a wide landscape and far-reaching vista there is any hopefulness in him. His own vista is bounded as before. It is not the landscape that he sees with his mind, but the near pursuit of the peasant by the roadside, the peasant by the bridge. In "The Fishers," two boys, with old men's faces, bend over the bridge's railings, and over them hangs a grey Dutch sky, monotonous and dreary as their lives. A wide landscape says nothing to Ostade. It is too great for him- he is never concerned with the infinite in any way. But just outside the cottage door-on the bench, within easy reach of ale-house tap- he and his work are happiest and best. Here is evoked such sense of beauty as he is dowered with by Nature, which is never profuse to him such sense of beauty as the conditions of his

III.

WELL, we have come now to the chiefest among our Masters of Etching-the last Dutchman with whom we have to deal - he in whose work is resumed the excellence and power of the whole Netherlands school: he whose art, like that of our own more limited Hogarth, is an art of "remonstrance," and not of "rapture."

Rembrandt has had biographers enough; but their disagreements have involved his life in mystery. Latest research appears, however, to show that he was born in 1606-on the 15th of July - and that he died at Amsterdam with proper bourgeois comfort, and not at Stockholm, miserably, in the first days of October, 1669. The son of a miller, whose mill was in the city of Leyden, he went to college in that city as boy and youth; and in days before it was the fashion, in the backward North, to be a painter of culture, he neglected his studies to grapple early with art. Owing little even of technical excellence to any master at all — owing most to perseverance and set purpose, and ready hand and observant eye - he settled in Amsterdam in 1630, when twenty-four years old: sure already to