The Argosy — page 216: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

197 A RAMBLE ON COPPER. WE do not suppose that many of the amateur public who call themselves “ artistic,” found their way last summer to Pall Mall East, in order to study the pictures of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers. Some indeed, believing they were going to see paintings, were disappointed when they entered the one room of the exhibition to see nothing but black and white, some of which were quite slight things, and some mere “scratches on paper!” Even now the general public in England—among which public there are many who call themselves artistic—know hardly anything about the art of etching, what it is, in what it differs from an en- graving, nor how the result is obtained. But now that we have a Royal Society with a President at its head; a President, too, who is one of the best living etchers; we may hope that a more intelligent interest and a more proper appreciation of this art may spring up; and if it does, we believe it will do much towards improving the work of those artists who yearly send up so many mindless pictures to our too numerous exhibitions. It would indeed be a boon to the general public, if some of the original plates of the old master-etchers could have been exhibited in juxtaposition with the works of our living artists on copper: we should then have had an art lecture without need of words, and we believe that even the ignorant amateur would have been able to discern that many of what he calls “mere scratches on paper” are the outcome of genius. Even with what was given us in this one room, containing not a ‘hundred and fifty pictures, we could learn that no one can be a good etcher who has not thoroughly mastered the great principles which make the real artist. Certainly much can be put on copper: an artist can ramble along many lines; he may exemplify on his one plate all the tricks of the art, if we may call them so; he may even have learnt tolerably accurate drawing, and yet his printed picture will give no pleasure, neither will it profit himself or others. Etching is nothing if it 1s not the direct impress of a thought: we must be able to stand before the work of the etcher and feel within ourselves that the idea it contains could not have been translated for us into any other artistic form. Among the pictures in this exhibition there were many examples about which we felt instinctively that the artist had better have saved his labour and tried to render his idea, if he knew what it was, in some other form; that oil or water-colour would have served his purpose better, as being more able to hide some kinds of poverty COM () VHOO|KS,CO im