"Artist, thou art king! Art is the true empire! When thy hand has drawn a perfect line, the cherubims themselves descend to delight themselves in it as in a mirror," wrote MÉrodack Peladan, in his preface to the Catalogue of the Salon de la Rose-Croix (1892). He expressed a great truth, that macabre and cabalistic poet-artist.

There is nothing more exquisite, more enjoyable, perhaps, to the art lovers than a perfect line. Pure line expression, as it is found in DÜrer, Harunobu, Raphael, and Ingres, is a pleasure apart from all other pictorial representations. It is more intellectual and more remote from all sensuous pleasure than colour, tone, light or shade. It is a language of itself which enables the artist to convey an abstract impression of his individuality.

And no medium expresses line in as pure and unadulterated a fashion as etching. It makes the most of it. Etching is the true worship of linear expression. In all other mediums there is a slight desire to hide line, it merely serves as an accessory. In etching it reigns supreme. There are no obstacles to the etching needle except incompetence. It translates every wish of the artist, the slightest accent or deviation with unerring precision and vitality. The Japanese, no doubt, achieved the greatest mastery of the drawn line that has ever been known to history. Only the line form of the Greek competes with it. The Japanese artists revelled in line expression, and it passed through all possible variations, from the sweep of Tanyu's brush and the classic curve of Harunobu to the angular DÜrer-like twist of Hokusai. But even their line, unless made by the brush, cannot rival in virility, delicacy and precision the line of a master etcher.

In his paintings Whistler sacrificed line too much. He felt that he had to find a medium in which he had absolute freedom to satisfy his desire and so he alighted upon etching. A draughtsman so sure of himself, so adroit at realizing by simple contrasts of black and white all the effects of which that austere, monochromatic medium is capable of, did not, one supposes, find himself unprepared to use the needle, and, indeed, at the first attempt, Whistler proved himself a successful etcher. True enough, his earliest work, like "La Vieille aux Loques," "La Marchande de Moutarde," "La Cuisine," and "La MÈre GÉrard," betrays a keen sense of the beauty of material; but they are, after all, conventional productions and show a slight influence of Rembrandt's etchings and the Little Dutch Masters. They are attempts at realistic picture-making, and, no matter how broadly the objects are conceived and carried out, look spotty. The light and shade division could be more scientific, and the tonality consequently a finer one. Too many little things fill out the pictorial scheme. He still worked for the effect of dignified completeness and had not yet learned to apply his later sense of elimination. The certainty and freedom of his draughtsmanship is always admirable. There is no academic pedantry in his drawing and no laborious effort. The beholder is charmed by its fascinating expressiveness and delightful flexibility. His perspective views and figure subjects convey an impression of unhesitating knowledge of form and contour and of an exact understanding of subtleties of modelling. They show no struggle with difficulties of statement; everything seems to come right, as a matter of course, and to fit together naturally without any deliberate intention on his part.

"LA VIEILLE AUX LOQUES" (ETCHING).

It was in 1855-58, during a trip to Alsace Lorraine with Delonney, an artist friend, when he made his first attempts at etching. A few dated prints like the "Scene in Alsatian Village" and "Street at Saverne" of this period are highly treasured by collectors, and pronounced as good as any that came after. A few years later, in the sixties, he took up the process more seriously and remained its ardent disciple ever afterwards. In the eighties he devoted more time to his etchings, pastels and water colours than to larger paintings. His fastidious love for rare and picturesque subjects made him select a number of favourite sketching grounds. They were the Thames embankments, of which he never tired, the French towns of Tours, Bourges and Loches, also Venice, and the Netherlands. Of course, like every true artist, he etched everything that appealed to him. There are numerous London and Paris sketches, scenes from Ajaccio and Algiers, and many figure compositions, character studies and portraits. But his French, Thames, Belgium, Holland and two Venice series are probably the most interesting from a collector's point of view, as they combine in a more pronounced manner direct Whistlerian methods with the quest of line expression.

STREET IN SAVERNE (ETCHING).

His first designs of the Thames series were made in 1859. Some few themes recur with many variations, such as the battered shop-fronts of Chelsea, "The Pool," the London bridges, the barges on the river, and the wharfs, warehouses and factories, like "Price's Candle Works." A few years later he made a trip through the northern part of France, and one of the finest results was the "learned, spirited" "HÔtel de Ville at Loches."

In 1879 he made his first trip to Venice, stayed fourteen months and made forty-four etchings during the time, including "Little Venice," "San Biagio," and "The Garden." In later years Holland attracted him almost as much as the city of the Adriatic. It is interesting to note his absolute disdain of literary associations. To him Venice was not, as to Heine, the city of Shakespeare. When he crossed the Rialto and Piazzetta he did not hear the voice of Shylock lamenting for his daughter, nor did he conjure up splendid visions of decayed power, as did Ruskin in his "Stones of Venice." The Venice of Claude Lorraine and Turner existed for him as little as the panoramic suavity of a Canaletto. He was satisfied with sitting at a little trattoria near the old Post Office, at Florian's, or in his simple sitting room at San Barnaba, dreaming of some linear expression of an old bridge or archway, of some enchanted fragment of vision, or a peculiar flush of colour over the Grand Canal. To him Venice was a modern city. He only saw what was actually there, and when it fascinated him, he seized his burin or crayon and endeavoured, with frank directness, to record the pictorial event. He invariably chose subjects that appealed to the experienced collector rather than the general public. He never idealized or conventionalized, nor did he belong to those who only see the ugly side of life, its squalor and unpicturesqueness.

Some of Whistler's admirers have pronounced him not only the greatest etcher of the day, but of all times, and compared him to Rembrandt. This comparison is not without justification, inasmuch as Whistler was not a professional etcher but a great artist who, like Rembrandt, took up the etching point as an instrument for new expression. They both sketched with wonderful freedom. They were no mechanics; under their hands the point lost the engraving look and became wonderfully free. Still, to say that Whistler was the best etcher of the day is rather a sweeping expression. Lalanne, Jacquemart, Appian, Veyrasset, Meyrion, Zorn, Pennell, Raffaelli, Rops and Klinger are all wonderful etchers. In painting, his mastership is indisputable. In etching I do not feel it quite as keenly. There is not the slightest doubt that etchings like "Jo," "The Adam and Eve Tavern," "Chelsea," "Soupe À Trois Sous," "The Lion's Wharf," the beautiful little still life "The Wine Glass," the portrait of "Becquet," "Unsafe Tenement," the "Battersea Bridge" of 1879—"a masterpiece of masterpieces"—show uncommon ability, which gives up everything to the right point and never beyond it. One of the most ravishing designs is his "Girl on a Couch." "The Model Resting," quite different in execution, is scarcely less captivating. But much of his work seems to be a little too elaborate, too overcrowded with line work. I do not particularly admire prints like his "Southampton Docks," "Portrait of Drouet" or "The Silent Canal." This is more astonishing when one compares them with the frugal technique of his paintings.

PORTRAIT OF DROUET (ETCHING).

A rather just, though somewhat pedantic, criticism came from the pen of Hamerton in 1881:

"Amongst living men Whistler may be cited as an etcher of rare quality in one important respect, the management of lines, but his etchings owe much of strange charm which they possess to Chinese disdain of tonal values, and to wayward caprice, loving it here and scorning it there, which, being strictly personal, can only be of use as an example in one sense, that it shows how valuable in art is genuine personal feeling. Whistler is an admirably delicate draughtsman when he likes; there are passages in his etchings which are as striking in their way as feats of execution, as the most wonderful passages of Meyrion."

There can be little fault found with this statement. I take objection only to the "wayward caprice" and the "Chinese disdain." I think that Whistler learned "loving detail here and scorning it there" only in his later works. It came out strongly in compositions like "The Balcony," "Doorway," and "Palace" and obtained full mastery in his "Dutch" series, above all the fascinating "Amsterdam Canal" piece, when the lines were so vague and subtle that deep biting was impossible and a few impressions would efface the design. As for the Chinese disdain of tonal values, I think it is Whistler's particular merit that he gradually abolished tonality altogether, and, in his later work, rarely resorted to cross-hatching. He laid more stress upon the simplification of line. Etchings can produce tonal sensations, but it is surely not the main object to strive for. Whistler followed Haden's doctrine that the line ought to be preserved as much as possible, and made the most of it. If the linear expression is sacrificed in etching there is no executive expression left; there is no brushwork to take its place; the etcher is working with a point and not with a brush, and there must be primarily point expression, that is line expression, or none.

BLACK LION WHARF (ETCHING).

Otto H. Bacher has written a few analytical notes of Whistler's line work. "Where it required accuracy he was minute. He used his needle with the ease of a draughtsman with a pen. He grouped his lines in an easy, playful way that was fascinating. They would often group themselves as tones, a difficult thing to get in an etching. He used line and dot in all its phases with certainty. Sometimes the lines formed a dark shadow of a passage through a house, with figures in the darkness so beautifully drawn that they looked far away from the spectator. These shadows which so beautifully defined darkness were made only by many lines carefully welded together and made vague as the shadows became faint in the distance or contrasted with some light object. He made his etched lines feel like air against solids.... If he etched a doorway, he played with the lines and allowed them to jumble themselves into beautiful forms and contrasts, but was always very careful of the general direction they should run as a whole." Bacher saw a good deal of Whistler in Venice, perhaps more so than any one else, and his observations on Whistler's etching tools, how he ground and bit his plates, are extremely interesting. "In grounding plates Whistler used the old-fashioned ground, composed of white wax, bitumen, pitch and rosin. He heated the plates with an ordinary alcohol flame, holding the plate in a small hand vise. The silk covered dabber that spread the ground over the plate was fascinatingly managed by Whistler.... When he came to smoking the plate he preferred the old wax taper made for that purpose. He kept his two etching needles, very sharp ordinary dentist tools, in cork, to preserve their fine points. Whistler always had his stopping-out varnish with him in a small bottle, applying it with a brush in a most delicate manner. He did not make use of any mirror but preferred the old negative process. When he bit a plate he put it on the corner of a kitchen table, with his retouching varnish, etching needle, feather and bottle of nitric acid, at hand, ready for instant use. Taking a feather, he would place it at the mouth of the bottle of acid, tipping bottle and allowing acid to run down the feather and drip on plate. He moved bottle and feather always in the same position around the edges until plate was covered,—would use feather continually to wash acid backward and forward upon the plate, keeping parts equally covered, and blowing away air bubbles."

Frequently Whistler sketched directly on copper plates. He carried the prepared plates in his pockets or in a book and when he found a motif sketched it in improvisatore fashion. His sketches of the "Annual Review at Spithead," in 1887, show his uncommon facility as a sketch artist. He was the champion of dry point. Already during the Leyland period he selected dry point as a favourite medium. And in this, to my notion, lies the strength of Whistler as an etcher. "Whistler added," as Joseph Pennell has so beautifully said, "a new scientific method to the art of etching—that of painting on the copper plate with the needle."

As a printer of his own plates he seems to have been quite an expert. He, no doubt, allowed himself great latitude and experimented with each plate, so that few impressions resemble each other. Although he had abolished blacks and dark tonal passages at an early date, he frequently painted on the plate with printer's ink, and went through an elaborate process of wiping. Of course this makes the excellence of the impression uneven, but also makes a particularly good one a more valuable possession.

The intention was always the same. From the very start he sought for the same arrangement of lines and spaces, the same effect as in his Venetian plates. He wanted breadth—not breadth of line itself, but breadth of expression. After all it was a growth and slow development. He became simpler and simpler, and well nigh reached perfection in his Parisian series of 1892-93, of little shops, boulevard scenes, and public gardens, and in prints like "The Little Mast," "The Riva," "The Barber," and "Zaandam" he acquired his wonderful sense for right workmanship on a small scale. Some of his etchings of fragments of architecture have never been surpassed in sketchy treatment; most noticeable perhaps in the exaggerated simplicity of the "London Bridge" and in the Holland series of the nineties. There we realize that great simplicity of motif is dependent on great simplicity of genius. The effects are so spontaneous and subdued that their value might well escape common observation. The extreme sensibility is a matter of both touch and vision. His plates look as if the rapidity of execution had been extraordinary, and yet his line, as delicate at times as in silver point drawings, is not exactly what we could call nervous, but of remarkable freedom and unerring precision. It is piquant and sprightly, subtle and alert.

The lines can almost be counted in some of his later etchings. He had learned the truth of the proverb "Wise economy is everything." It was even more than wise economy. It was the highest expression of artistic wisdom, which had almost disappeared since the surface decorations of Greek vases, in which mood, character and incident were reduced to a few details, strong enough to incite in the imagination of the beholder all that was eliminated.

Every art is at its best when it is most itself. Nobody realized this more than Whistler, who invariably emphasized this. He had an absolutely clear idea of what every medium could do. In his larger paintings it was the exploitation of a few dull colours, of a silhouette in space combined with psychological research; in his nocturnes, a play of slightly differentiated tones; in his water-colours a mere suggestion of reality; and in his pastels a certain joyousness of expression. Pure line, caprice of detail, distance and atmosphere, he reserved for his etchings; and a subtle expression of values of "moss-like gradations" for his lithographs. His decision may not always appear right to others, but it was right to him. How carefully he thought out these technical problems is shown in his "Propositions," which he addressed to an American etching club that had invited him to take part in a competition of large plates. He wrote the following series of maxims that should be posted on the wall of every studio:

"That art is criminal to go beyond the means used in its exercise."

"That the space to be covered should always be in proper relation to the means used for covering it."

"That in etching, the means used, or instruments employed, being the finest possible point, the space to be covered should be small in proportion."

"That all attempts to overstep the limits insisted upon such proportions are inartistic thoroughly, and tend to reveal the paucity of the means used, instead of concealing the same, as required by art in its refinement."

"That the huge plate, therefore, is an offence—its undertaking an unbecoming display of determination and ignorance—in accomplishment a triumph of unthinking earnestness and uncontrolled energy—both endowments of the 'duffer.'"

WAPPING, ON THE THAMES (ETCHING).

"That the custom of 'Remarque' emanates from the amateur and reflects his foolish facility beyond the border of his picture, thus testifying to his unscientific sense of its dignity."

"That it is odious."

"That, indeed, there should be no margin on the proof to receive such 'Remarque.'"

"That the habit of the margin, again, dates from the outsider, and continues with the collector in his unreasoning connoisseurship—taking curious pleasure in the quantity of the paper."

"That the picture ending where the frame begins, and in the case of etchings, the white mount, being inevitably, because of its colour, the frame, the picture thus extends itself irrelevantly through the margin of the mount."

"That wit of this kind would leave six inches of raw canvas between the painting and its gold frame, to delight the purchaser with the quality of the cloth."

We may not agree with his conclusion on the margin and remarque. The latter, no doubt, was introduced by the artist to please the purchaser. It is therefore, if a fault at all, that of the artist as much as of the collector. The question of margin is an individual one. There is little difference between a mat and a margin, and the Japanese print and the framing of black and whites in general have taught us the utility of uneven spacing around the picture. The remainder of the argument is excellent, theoretically as well as Æsthetically.

Whistler's composition, excepting the French set, was strictly impressionistic. One merely has to look at the "Cadogan Pier," "The Little Pool," "Old Hungerford Bridge," "Little Wapping," "The Velvet Dress," "The Dam Wood," "The Long Lagoon," etc., to come to this conclusion.

OLD HUNGERFORD BRIDGE (ETCHING).

The word impressionism is rather difficult to explain. It is on the tongue of everybody, and yet few mean exactly the same thing when they make use of it. The term applied formerly to every art expression—as every artist endeavoured to render an impression—has been specialized in the latter half of the last century. It has become the nickname of a definite number of painters, who have adopted a new palette (as suggested by scientific researches) and introduced a new method of laying colours on the canvas. In recent years the term has undergone another change—it has become a general claim for individuality of subject and treatment.

First of all, let us determine what difference there really is between the old and the new style of impressionism. The artist of the old school received an impression and elaborated upon it. He embellished it with all his art was capable of, and the original impression underwent all sorts of changes. It was merely the first inspiration—the foundation stone upon which the whole art structure was erected. The artist of the new school, on the other hand, endeavours to reproduce the impression he has received, unchanged. He wants the impression itself, and wants to see it on his canvas as he has seen and felt it, hoping that his interpretation may call forth similar Æsthetic pleasures in others as the original impression did in him. It is a singular coincidence, indeed, that while the men of the lens busy themselves with imitating the art of several centuries ago, those of the brush are seeking but for the accuracy of the camera plus technical individuality.

The impressionist painters adhere to a style of composition that apparently ignores all previous laws. They depict life in scraps and pigments, as it appears haphazard in the finder or on the ground glass of the camera. The mechanism of the camera is essentially the one medium which renders every interpretation impressionistic, and every photographic print, whether sharp or blurred, is really an impression.

How did the impressionistic painters arrive at this new style of composition? Permit me two questions. When was impressionism introduced into painting? In the sixties. When did photography come into practice? In the early forties. Do you see what I am driving at? Photography in the sixties was still a comparative novelty, and consequently excited the interest of pictorial reformers more than it does to-day. Its influence must have been very strongly felt, and the more I have thought of the nature of this influence the stronger has become the conviction in me that the impressionistic style of composition is largely of photographic origin.

THE SILENT CANAL (ETCHING).

Impressionistic composition is unthinkable without the application of focus. The lens of the camera taught the painter the importance of a single object in space to realize that all subjects cannot be seen with equal clearness, and that it is necessary to concentrate the point of interest according to the visual abilities of the eye. There is no lens, as everybody knows, which renders foreground and middle distance equally well. If three objects, for instance, a house, a tree and a pool of water, stand at different depths before the camera, the photographer can, at will, fix either the house, the tree or the pool of water, but whatever one of these three objects it will be, the other two objects will appear less distinct.

The human eye could have told the painter the same story, as the eye naturally and instinctively rests on the most pleasing part of the scene, and in so doing, puts out of focus more or less all the other parts. It is a curious fact that all the compositions of the Old Masters were out of focus. True enough they swept minor light and colour notations into larger ones, but there seldom was any definite indication in their work whether an object was in the foreground or middle distance. This way of seeing things was, no doubt, a voluntary one—they had a different idea of pictorial interpretation. In their pictures, as in nature, we continually allow our attention to flit from one point to the other in the endeavour to grasp the whole, and the result is a series of minor impressions, which consciously influence the final and total impression we receive from a picture. The impressionist is satisfied with giving one full impression that stands by itself, and it was the broadcast appearance of the photographic images in the sixties that taught him to see and represent life in focal planes and divisions.