The Argosy — page 217: what you’re looking at

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

198 A Ramble on Copper. of idea, and that a simple charcoal drawing would have taken up less of his time. One test we can easily apply in studying etchings. Has the master idea been given here in its best way? If not, the exhibitor is not a painter-etcher and had better try some other mode of showing genius ; for in all etchings there should be a spark from the sacred fire, or else the etching 1s worthless. A ramble through a beautiful country may give us the highest form of enjoyment, but a ramble may also be a weary wandering through dull paths and we may return home more Jaded than refreshed. So it is with a ramble on copper. We may stand before a simple etching where art and not craft is visible, and we shall feel that we are reading a master-mind ; that every line means something and that that something was what the artist meant us to understand, and if we cannot fully understand it it is our fault and not his, and that we must look and look again till we do know his meaning, the meaning of what is noble and true. The amateur need not despair if, in spite of loving the beautiful, everything is not at first plain to him. Itdoes not follow that because the greatest 1s often the simplest it is also the easiest to understand. And there is yet another subject of consolation for him, and that 1s, that the first President of the Painter-Etchers is an amateur ! The word makes us smile when we consider the work he has done ; nevertheless, it is true. In this exhibition the greater number of the etchings were by his hand (one or two of his best, however, were unfortunately absent), and the thought there represented was astonish- ing. Yet one of our greatest modern etchers has not spent his life in etching, nor in a studio, but he has been a successful physician. Genius, however, seems seldom anxious to live in a house specially prepared for it; 1t often knocks at unlikely doors, and is not to be commanded, but commands. The President’s pictures were by no means the largest or the most important-looking in the room, but a careful study soon enabled even amateurs, z.é., those who possess the love of art and of beautiful ideas, to settle that only a few of the exhibitors were to be compared with him, and that those few had found it difficult to express so much with so little as Mr. Seymour Haden had done. Some—figuratively speak- ing—had clothed their statue to hide the lack of form beneath, and some had had so many ideas that they forgot to express one clearly. On the contrary, Mr. Seymour Haden in his work despises all super- fluous lines which mean nothing ; he knows that every recorded stroke must be the right one, and, besides having its own proper value, must suggest other lines to the spectator without their being visible. Genius, as it were, takes us into its confidence. It does not say, ‘You are an idiot, and cannot combine for yourself ;” but it says, ‘“T shall put down what is requisite for you, in order that you may fill up all the minor details of my central idea yourself, and by doing this (SOA (~) 21 0)(0)(0)| KS,(E(6)