, •: :• V V ■■ . T; i- :% %Wr$£ & IfeMSA ■■’ - mz f « * i* * * -• • •' - • ■ x : t * Jm safe. m£M \: "•:■?■/ ; - . THE ETCHED WORK ... :■ .rv^. ' s«esjsi:5 OF BRANDT. A MONOGRAPH. FRANCIS SEYMOUR HADEN. X\ * '\ ■ i * '. : ' ;: -3T ' ; ■ ‘ : '* -4;:,T •• *T.': ~V *• : •. •• » r ; v -'-' Iflf : ‘ 4 ' ; WfA '$ : '4*£g': ■ ' - m ~t- ..■ ■ ; . ' '■ .* • -, . . . ^ijuuju . I *4 : * •■ ^ : . ' ;.;,' .-V. '■’’ > '• ■■ ' -■ \- ’ * f.-':;:':;V- |t ifeftA ' • " <£ ■ “Omval” (which is not a village, but a bend in the river Amstel, near Amsterdam), “ The Omval No. io, “A Grotto with a Brook,” “ The Boat House” &c.; and (subject to further examination) No. 27, “The Goldweigher’s Field,” Six's Chateau — the probability being that most, if not all, of the prints from 9 to 27 were done at Elsbroeck or in the neighbourhood. At Jan Six’s sale too in 1702 (Vosm. 385) were “ some engraved plates by Rembrandt.” F. S. H. APPENDIX. APPENDIX. A Statement presented by the Author , March i, 1879, to the Committee of the Burlington Fme Arts Club , respecting a mutilated appro- priation of the foregoing Monograph in “ A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Rembrandt Van Rynf by Charles Henry Middleton , B.A. 1879. The necessity for a reprint of the preceding Monograph will be sufficiently explained by the annexed letter : — ( Athenceum , January 18, 1879.) “I should be doing myself less than justice if I did not at once “ direct critical attention to a treatise on 1 The Etched Work of “ Rembrandt ’ which has just issued from the press. “ With the ink hardly dry of an essay which I wrote in the spring “of 1877 on the same subject, I know not at which to be most “ amazed, the suppressions, the appropriations, or the misrepresenta- “ tions in respect to it contained or implied in the treatise in question “ — unless, indeed, it be the dedication of that treatise to the members “ of the Burlington Fine Arts Club, in whose service the original “essay was written, and by whose Committee it was printed and “ circulated. “ Meanwhile, as an individual member of the Club, and pending “ the republication of my Monograph, I have no choice but to “ repudiate a dedication to which my assent was never asked, and “ which, unrepudiated, would have the effect of committing me to a “ tacit approval of a disingenuous and unreliable book. “ F. SEYMOUR HADEN. “ Burlington Fine Arts Club, “ January 14.” Reduced to terms, the charge here preferred amounts to this : 1. That, both the foregoing Monograph and the Chronological 44 APPENDIX. arrangement to which it refers having been devised by its author to bring forward and substantiate views of his own as to the probable unauthentic character of certain of the prints hitherto attributed to Rembrandt, that arrangement and those views have been appro- priated, en bloc , by the Rev. C. H. Middleton, B.A., and now stand as his ; i, in a series of papers published by him in the Academy; 2, in “ a Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Rembrandt” of which he is the recent compiler. 2. That, shorn of these appropriations, which constitute their sole claim to originality, the publications in question are without a raisoji d’etre , and — as to the Descriptive Catalogue in particular — that it is intrinsically unreliable. To substantiate this charge the author proposes simply to contrast passages from the Monograph with extracts from Mr. Middleton’s book, and to leave the reader to form his own conclusions ; the few words of general explanation which follow being, however, in the first place, necessary. When Mr. Middleton presented himself to the author in 1876, he regarded him, and was justified in regarding him, less as a student of Rembrandt, than as a literary man who saw that there was room for a new Catalogue of the Etchings, and who proposed to himself to supply the want. Admitting that, as yet, he knew little of Rembrandt and nothing of Etching processes, and that he was un- endowed with any special art faculties to help him in such a task, he still hoped, by time and study, to surmount these disadvantages, and, as to the last, was not sure that it was a disadvantage. What he wanted, was to learn. He had heard of a projected Exhibition of Rembrandt’s Etchings at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, which he understood was to be on a novel plan devised by the author, and he wished to profit by that exhibition ; and if, in the way of mere clerical work for which he had abundant leisure, he could in any way assist in it, he should be glad to render such assistance, and, for that purpose, to place himself entirely under his (the author’s) direction. On this modest footing Mr. Middleton was enlisted as a recruit, and became a member of the Club and of the Rembrandt Committee, and on these simple conditions his first piece of clerical work — which was to be the writing out of a chrono- logical list of the Etchings based on that of Vosmaer — was given APPENDIX. 45 him : the working plan of the committee being that the prints exhibited should first be hung according to such a list, and then that the author and the hanging committee should go in and change them and give them the order which, for the special purposes of the exhibition, they were ultimately to bear. All this was done > the Etchings were hung according to the approximative list prepared, and then, as agreed upon, the author and his colleagues, went in and altered them, rectifying dates that had been misread, relegating to their proper places late prints which Vosmaer had placed as early ones, and, generally, bringing the whole collection into the order which from the first he had designed it to have, and which it was absolutely necessary it should have, to bring it into harmony and intelligible accord with the paper which he was writing and with the new views which it was the object of that paper to develop. Meanwhile, a circumstance had occurred which materially dis- turbed the smooth current of these proceedings. Mr. Middleton, who had by this time been a member of the club long enough to master the author’s plan in all its details, had written him a letter in which he began to speak of his work as in some sort his own, and, closely following on this letter, had appeared in the Academy a paper which clearly foreshadowed his intention to make such a claim. Moreover, this paper being headed No. i, seemed to promise a series which, at the rate only of one a fort- night, might easily have been made to cover the whole ground of the author’s speculations, and to forestall the appearance of the paper which he was preparing, and which would not, in the ordinary course, be printed till April. Now, apart from the ex- treme impropriety of such a proceeding on the part of a member of a club engaged with other members in a common work, and the sinister intention which it betrayed, was this serious incon- venience attending it : viz., that before even the hanging of the frames could be finished it would have introduced into the whole scheme such an element of confusion as to dislocate its sense and continuity, and even endanger the result which it was hoped to obtain from it. It will, therefore, not be thought extraordinary if, in the face of such a project, it was deemed necessary to remonstrate with Mr. Middleton, and even to threaten him with exposure if it were persisted in. It was not persisted in. No more papers were sent to the Academy , and, on the distinct understanding that no rhore 4 6 APPENDIX. should be sent, and that Mr. Middleton was sensible of his laches and regretted it, the author so far overlooked the matter as not to bring his conduct before the committee, and not to oppose his resumption of the purely mechanical work which he had under- taken to do — contenting himself with merely reading to two of its members, unofficially, the letter he had received, and with sending a note to the editor of the Academy to offer him, if he wished it, an explanation of the cessation of Mr. Middleton’s contribu- tions. i. This much premised, let any one now take up Mr. Middleton’s book and see if, from the first page to the last, it would be possible to infer that any one but himself had been concerned in the new views and arrangements here described. First, however, the Monograph : “ On the occasion of a former “ Exhibition of the Etchings of Rembrandt, in the Old Club House “ in 1867, it was suggested to the Committee that the arrange- “ ment according to Subject , then universally adopted, was fatal to “ the comprehensive study of such works, and that it might with “ advantage be discarded for the more rational order of date of “ production ; that an arbitrary method, by which works of the latest ‘‘ were mixed up with works of the earliest period, confused the sense, “ perverted the judgment, and rendered critical examination and com- “ parison impossible ; and, generally, that such a system, though “ it might satisfy the cataloguer, was unworthy of the biographer and “ useless to the student. The art work of a lifetime, it was con- “ tended, should not be looked at as a series of haphazard “ disjointed efforts, but as the continuous expression of a pro- “ longed chain of logical sequences depending for their coherence “ on the due maintenance of the order of their production, and “ only to be properly understood when studied in that order ; and “ finally it was hinted— and that with tolerable confidence — that if “ this unintelligent and incoherent classification were reversed, and a “ more consecutive method of arrangement substituted for it, new mat- “ ter yet unsuspected in regard to the Etched Work of Rembrandt “ might be brought to light, and grave errors of attribution as to “ some of his larger published plates be both proved and rectified.” (Mon. pp. 1, 2.) Now, Mr. Middleton’s book : “ That which gives this catalogue a its greatest claim to originality is the chronological arrangement APPENDIX. 47 “ which I have thought it expedient to adopt ” (Mid. Cat. p. xii). “ The reasons which have led me to determine on some form of “ chronological arrangement (p. xiv). “ The conclusions which / “ have come to ” (this is as to the new views) “ and to which I do not “ hesitate to commit myself” (p. xxiii), &c., &c. “ And ” (as to the hanging) “ I am glad to express my obligations to the experienced “ connoisseurs with whom I was associated for valuable hints and “ criticisms which have afforded me no small assistance in this “ part of my task ” (p. xiv). Would any one suppose from this kind of writing that there was any such a thing as a committee of which Mr. Middleton was but the humblest member, or, from what follows, that any one was so odious or, in the matter of etching, so ignorant as the author ! Thus : “ Mr. Seymour Haden charges “ Rembrandt with having permitted the use of his signature that he “ might make a profit of it” (p. 12). “It is evident from Mr. “ Haden’s remarks that he has not thoroughly acquainted himself,” &c., &c., “ while the curious mistakes he makes in enumerating the “ pupils and his criticisms upon their peculiar work prove that he had “ not studied their technic with sufficient closeness to justify his “ conclusions ” (p. 13). “ Amateurs who have not made Rembrandt “ their special study may be excused if they are disposed, at first “ sight, to repudiate it, and assign it to inferior hands ” (p. 10). “ The true explanation however is that the larger number of these “ studies ” {i.e. the small heads considered by Mr. Haden to be spurious) “ were experimental ; trials of the needle and of the “ copper to familiarise himself” (Rembrandt !) “with his ground, “ his point, his mordant, and his press ” (p. 13). Having thus, — while expressing, with amusing gravity, his obliga- tions to the rest of the hanging committee, — taken quiet possession of the chronological arrangement, and disposed of any claim which its author might be supposed to have to be heard on the question of “technic” (a vile word, by the way, and a cloak for much ignorance), Mr. Middleton next proceeds, by the simple process of a wholesale suppression of his identity, to dispose of him altogether as an original observer. Thus, on each of the prints to which he had, till now, believed himself to be the first to take exception, Mr. Middleton has of course something to say, but, oddly enough, that something invari- ably refers not to the author but to himself, or to some imaginary con- noisseur whom he invokes for the occasion, and who has, all along, 48 APPENDIX. been thinking exactly in the same direction. Thus, of “ The Flight into Egypt,” which is one of the prints which the Monograph con- demns, “this is a very doubtful piece,” says Mr. Middleton, “ see my notes” (p. 1 71); of “The Goldweigher,” “ Connoisseurs have agreed in assigning the inferior work ‘in this plate ’ to another hand,” &c. (p. 12 1); of the great “Descent from the Cross,” “ the first to cast a doubt on its authenticity was P. J. Marriette” (p. 176) (the fact being that Marriette does not throw a doubt on the plate at all, but only on some burin lines which he clearly implies had been added to it), and so on ; the whole of these remarks being, clearly, only half true, and of a nature to mislead. But the most glaring instance of the form of misrepresentation referred to is the account given of the “Ecce Homo,” the print which, more than any other, had occupied the attention of the author, and which, in fact, had furnished him with a chief motive for his inquiries. Of this print, which, up to the moment of the author’s putting pen to paper, had been extolled by the cataloguers, one and all, as one of the most able of Rembrandt’s works, Mr. Middleton has not scrupled thus to write : — “ It has long been a question , among competent critics, as to what “ extent this finely designed print is the work of Rembrandt, or how “ much of it was intrusted to an assistant or pupil Josi is “ said to have first raised the question. Mr. Carpenter, late keeper “ of the prints in the British Museum, kindly directed my attention “ many years ago to those details which he believed were by a different “ hand; and more than one distinguished artist has so strongly ex- “ pressed himself upon the inferiority of the technic in some parts of “ this large print, that its doubtfulness has become almost traditional “ in the British Museum print-room ” (pp. 193, 194). On reading this imprudently circumstantial statement the author thought it worth while to address the following question to Mr. Reid, the present Keeper of the Prints in the British Museum, premising that when he did so, and was already in receipt of Mr. Reid’s answer, Mr. Reid had not seen (so he has since assured him) Mr. Middleton’s book, and was unaware of the author’s object in addressing him. “ Question . — During your long connection with the late Mr. “ Carpenter, did you ever hear him question the authenticity of the “ great ‘ Ecce Homo ’ of Rembrandt ? ” “ Answer. — The unfinished proof of the ‘ Ecce Homo,’ the large APPENDIX. 49 “ ‘ Coppenol,’ with the white background, and the uncut plate of the “ f Sleeping Dog/ were frequently shown as specialities by Mr. Josi, u and Mr. Carpenter completely accepted Mr. Josi’s theory with “ regard to the first, which was to the effect that this print displayed “ the wonderful power of Rembrandt, by means of which he could “ dispense w r ith an outline of the design on the copper, and could “ begin at the corners of the plate and work towards the middle. / “ have often heard Mr. Carpenter descant on this ?iotion. Two cir- “ cumstances also have for many years been frequent subjects of con- “ versation between you and me. The first is that when I assisted “ Mr. Josi in arranging our Rembrandts, I endeavoured to find out “ the Master’s mode of working ; but although I had the advantage “ of being able to draw on wood, so that technical processes were “ known to me, I could never understand how the differences in the “ character and execution of certain examples were to be accounted “ for till you suggested , and often repeated , your conviction, that those “ examples had been executed by other hands, with which suggestion “ I have, from that time, entirely agreed. The second circumstance “ is that ( your suggestion having been first made), I was the person “ who, in corroboration of it, called your attention to the study in “ bistre belonging to Lady Eastlake, w T hich I pointed out had “ evidently been made by Rembrandt as a working model for the “ copyist of the ‘ Ecce Homo,’ and I observed upon the following “ facts as being in favour of my idea, viz. : — i. That the composi- “ tion is in a sense the reverse of the etching. 2. That its date is earlier than that of the etching. 3. That the pigment employed upon “ it is of a nature to facilitate its reproduction by a copyist. This “ second circumstance you may remember occurred long before the “ last exhibition of Rembrandt’s etchings at our club in Savile Row. “ Signed — Geo. Will. Reid, “ British Museum Print Room, Jan. 15, 1879.” This statement, and Mr. Reid’s answer to it, the author now brings to the formal notice of the Committee of the Burlington Fine Arts Club, who, by an adroit process, which he is assured has never obtained the assent of the Committee, find themselves yoked to the chariot-wheels of the Rev. Mr. Middleton ; while to Mr. Middleton himself he puts the following question : — How is it if competent critics have been so long agreed as to the unauthentic E 50 APPENDIX. character of this print — ever since the time of Josi in fact — that, so lately as 1873, the most competent of them all thus speaks of it? 1 “ Les nombreux dessins de ce grand peintre qui sont repandus “ dans les collections de l’Europe peuvent nous faire juger que “ Rembrandt se prepara par des etudes serieuses a l’execution de “ cette belle planche, la plus considerable de son oeuvre. Iln’estpas “ une seule des figures de premier plan, de celles qui composent le “ groupe place dans la lumiere, qui n’ait ete l’objet d’une etude a part. “ Rembrandt en a cherche les modeles, non pas dans son imagination, “ mais dans la nature. Le quartier des Juifs, qu’il habitait a Amster- “ dam, lui a fourni cette variete de types dans une meme race, qu’il “ n’aurait pu rencontrer nulle autre part, ces tetes marquees a “ Fempreinte du fanatisme, ces jeunes homines a la barbe fine et “ frisee, a la peau luisante, ces vieillards enfumes, squalides et ranees, “ qui affichent a la fois de la misere et de luxe, qui sont revetus de “ fourrures pre'eieuses et d’habits troues, de linge sale et de pierreries. “ Et quelle foule ! Comme elle est epaisse, remuante, et ondoyante ! ” And that this description refers, not alone to the composition, but to the plate itself : — “ Ce morceau est fort recherche, une tres belle “ e'preuve, provenant de la collection Michel de Marseille, fut “ adjugee a la vente Debois pour 1,095 fr* Mais depuis la vente “ Debois qui eut lieu 1843 les choses ont bien change et le prix “ des pieces rares s’est accru de beaucoup. Nous avons vu cette “ anne'e meme un amateur de Paris, M. Dreux, payer une superbe “ epreuve de ce meme etat 1,400 fr.’’ This u Ecce Homo ” statement, and the “ Josi-Carpenter story ” employed to support it, are now, the author wishes it to be observed, being circulated with the tacit sanction, which a dedication supposed to be authorised implies, of the Burlington Fine Arts Club. It is for the Committee, as guardians of the honour and influence of the Club, to consider this. 2. But the question still remains. Is Mr. Middleton’s compila- tion, divested of its appropriations and its misstatements, a desirable addition to Rembrandt literature, and a reliable guide to the student and collector, or is it not? The author submits that it is not. Firstly, because it is disingenuous, and, in a large portion of its plan, written, obviously, to mislead. Secondly, because, by reason of the redundancy of useless matter which encumbers it — * L’CEuvre Complet de Rembrandt. Par M. Charles Blanc. Paris, 4to., 1873. APPENDIX. 5i such as its enumeration of “ copies ” which would not deceive a child, and its exaltation into “states” of mere “press” scratches which may be seen on one impression and not on another — it is a positive aggravation of the confusion which the surplusage of the catalogues has already introduced into the subject. Thirdly, because, by the compiler’s ignorance of processes, and inaptitude by nature to form a reliable art judgment, its conclusions are nearly always wrong and often ridiculous. Mr. Middleton, it is true, has himself told us that he sets little store by this intuitive art faculty — nay, that “ it often lamentably “ fails in cases where we should have expected to find it in perfec- “ tion ; ” but the author’s opinion, as the offender here referred to, is that if Mr. Middleton had been endowed with but a tithe of this in- valuable aptitude, he would not have written all the nonsense he has about “technic,” or been led into the absurdity of accounting for differences of style, and even of authorship, by vagaries of “the acid,” and that many of his “ true explanations ” would not have been hazarded ; that we should never have heard that only the head in the “Rembrandt with a turned-up hat and embroidered mantle ” was by Rembrandt ; * that the 2nd State of the Lutma was evidently not by him ; and that the great and laborious dry point of the Crucifixion was “ probably nothing more than a study for some more important work on canvas /” (p. 231). Mr. Middleton’s description of, and criticisms on, this great plate — one of the most dramatic, characteristic, and personal of all Rembrandt’s works — are, in fact, altogether so extraordinary that, in estimating his competency and the reliability of his compilation, it would never do not to give it in extenso. The Monograph had said that “ The rudely expressed actors “ in the early state of the ‘ Crucifixion,’ had been only roughly “ ‘ laid in,’ because they had to be ultimately rendered in an ad- “ vanced chiaroscuro to suit the divine passage which, in a later “ state, they were destined to illustrate ‘Now from the “ sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth “ hour. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain “ from the top to the bottom ; and the earth did quake, and the “ rocks rent ;’.... that the plate, in short, from the first, was “ intended to be one of those dark plates of which we have an “example in the ‘Christ Entombed ’ (W. 91), and that it was, * “Academy,” Feb. 24, 1877, 5 APPENDIX. “ therefore, useless to do more than indicate figures which were to “ be ultimately half obscured.” Well, with this — as it will seem, the author thinks, to most practical etchers reasonable explanation — Mr. Middleton thus deals : having first, as has been said, made the suggestion that the whole thing after all may be no more than “ a study ” for a more important work on canvas. “ It has been asserted that the fourth state ” (i.e. the dark state referred to in the Monograph, and which Mr. Middleton chooses to christen " the altered plate ”) “ is Rembrandt’s true completion “ of the design * I have no hesitation in ascribing it to atiother “ hand V .... Let the student compare an impression of the “ altered plate ’, part by part, with an impression of the first and “ second state, or a good impression of the third; let him remark “ on the variations in the Sacred Figure upon the cross, and the “ re-arrangement and details of the groups below ; the obliteration “ of the dying thief upon the right (one of the most ably drawn “ figures in the whole scene) ; let him notice the utter weakness or “ entire absence of expression, the confused dis- arrangement of “ light and shade, the feebleness of the ruled lines, and the uncer- “ tain purpose of the deep strokes across the foreground, only the “ more imbecile if \ as has been suggested , they are intended to repre- “ sent the rending of the rocks , and then form his own conclusions as “ to the value of the work. This new work was neither designed nor “ executed by Rembrandt , but by some inferior artist who could neither “ understand the conception nor imitate the technic ! ” (P. 231.) A wonderful piece of e xpertism indeed ! So wonderful that it may safely be left to make its way in the Art world without the author’s assistance. From him, therefore, it shall have no other comment than that which, in a spirit of prophecy, as it now appears, he wrote two years ago (Monograph p. 38), and with which he is content to close his review of this worthless book : — “ To make a Catalogue Raisonne of the work of Rembrandt, it “ is not enough to be able to detect and record small points of “ difference, and yet be without a comprehensive knowledge of the “ man, and of his art, or of Art in general, or of the art of Etching “ in particular. Experience; practice; an actual acquaintance with “ what is possible and what is impossible to be done upon a plate of “ copper, and with the details of the printing process too ; the ready APPENDIX. 53 “ discernment which belongs to the artist nature ; the skill of the “ synthesist no less than of the analysist, and many a rare gift be- “ sides, must be in possession of him who would undertake so “ delicate and responsible a task. Borrowed ideas hastily picked up “ and strung together, the division and sub-division of things which “ in their very nature are indivisible, can, without such special “ aptitudes, but lead to the multiplication of states and differences “profitable only to the dealer— and to a confusion of the subject “ even greater than that which exists at present. “ FRANCIS SEYMOUR HADEN.” March i, 1879. LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL. 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