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555
LE STRYGE
OLD PARIS
TWENTY ETCHINGS BY
CHARLES MERYON
WITH AN ESSAY ON THE ETCHER BY
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON



LIVERPOOL
HENRY YOUNG & SONS LTD.
1914


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10 - 14-32 B
LIST OF
OF PLATES
LE STRYGE
EAUX-FORTES SUR PARIS
ARMS SYMBOLICAL OF THE CITY OF PARIS
LE PETIT PONT
L'ARCHE DU PONT NOTRE-DAME
LA GALERIE DE NOTRE-DAME
LA RUE DES MAUVAIS GARÇONS
LA TOUR DE L'HORLOGE
TOURELLE, RUE DE LA TIXÉRANDERIE
SAINT-ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT
Size of Original Plate
63 X 510 Frontispiece
6% x 5
I
510 410
II
716 X 51%
III
6 x 78 IV
ulto X 7
V
5 X 31%
VI
108 x 71 VII
9% X 510 VIII
91% X 516 IX
638 x 10
X
73 x 71% XI
6 X 131% XII
910 X 8% XIII
62XII XIV
116 X 53% XV
6,1% 58 XVI
5 X 6,86 XVII


LA POMPE NOTRE-DAME
Le Pont Neuf
LE PONT-AU-CHANGE
LA MORGUE
L'ABSIDE DE NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
RUE DES CHANTRES
LE MINISTÈRE DE LA MARINE

10
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Dessous DE LA PREMIÈRE ARCHE DU 576 x 8
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XIX
957-21
6
408787
CHARLES
M É RY ON

T
HE case of Charles Méryon is one of
those painful ones which recur in every
generation to prove the fallibility of the
popular judgment. Méryon is one of the greatest
and most original artists who have appeared in
Europe; he is one of the immortals; his name
will be inscribed on the noble roll where Dürer and
Rembrandt live for ever. An intelligent writer
upon art said, not very long ago, that artists had
no occasion to complain of the public, because, if
the matter were inquired into, it would be found
that every artist had his own public. This is, no
doubt, in a certain sense true; every writer and
every artist is appreciated by somebody, if only he
has some sort of talent and accomplishment; but
for an author or an etcher to live by his work he
needs more than this little group of friends. Three
customers will keep a painter from starving for a
year, but no composer of printed matter could live
if he had only three readers. An etcher is a com-
poser of printed matter, and he needs a public
sufficiently large to remunerate him adequately for
his time—that is, at least two hundred regular
7.





CHARLES MÉRYON
buyers. Now, to find two hundred regular buyers
he requires ten times that number of students and
admirers; and it is not always easy to excite the
serious interest of two thousand people. A public
which is not extensive enough to enable its favourite
to live by his labour, is for all practical purposes not
a public at all; and it is in vain to tell an author
that he is unreasonable to wish for more than a
hundred readers, or an etcher that he is foolishly
anxious for notoriety when he is not satisfied with
the approbation of the cultivated few. The suffrage
of the cultivated few is very desirable, and there is
more intellectual and artistic encouragement in the
quiet praise of ten competent persons, than in the
applause of multitudes; but the very love of art
itself compels an artist to wish for a public not only
educated, but numerous; because, without either a
numerous public or independent private fortune, he
cannot continue to work. Méryon has been sorely
tried by public and national indifference, and in a
moment of bitter discouragement he destroyed the
most magnificent series of his plates. When we
think of the scores of mediocre engravers of all
kinds, who, without one ray of imagination, live
decently and contentedly by their trade, and then of
this rare and sublime genius actually ploughing
deep burin lines across his inspired work, because
8
CHARLES MÉRYON
no man regarded it; and when we remember that
this took place in Paris, in our enlightened nine-
teenth century, it makes one doubt whether, after
all, we are much better than savages or barbarians.
Now that plates can be preserved by steeling, the
etchings of a man like Méryon would sell by tens of
thousands if the world knew their value; but when
such work as this is set before modern society, it is
a setting of pearls—&c.
Méryon was born in Paris in 1821, and his father
was an Englishman. Much of the unusual delicacy
of perception which distinguishes him as an artist,
is attributed by M. Burty to maternal influence.
He studied mathematics with much industry and
application, and entered in 1837 the naval school of
Brest. As a naval officer he visited many remote
shores, sailing even round the world, and always
employing his leisure hours in sketching everything
of interest that came in his way. But, though
Méryon loved the sea, and had a fraternal affection
for sailors, his health was not robust enough for a
life of that kind, and he was obliged to abandon his
profession. Being already an intelligent practical
amateur, he endeavoured to become an artist; and,
with the intention of adopting painting as a pro-
fession, took lessons of M. Phellippes, a former pupil
of David. As a painter, Méryon did not succeed,

9
CHARLES MÉRYON
probably from anxiety to produce pictures without
the necessary technical education. Whilst suffering
from disappointment in this ambition, he happened
to meet with M. Eugène Bléry, who directed his
attention to etching. Méryon studied etching for
several months with M. Bléry, and employed this
time fruitfully in the analysis of plates by the elder
masters, which he copied as exercises. This pre-
liminary study was followed by excursions in Nor-
mandy and a visit to Bourges, a picturesque old
city not very far south of the Loire.
Before undertaking the series of original etchings
on which his fame will rest, Méryon laboriously
employed the art in the translation of other men's
work, or in the execution of more or less uncongenial
commissions. What developed Méryon was his
passionate wish to preserve some adequate memorial
of that picturesque old city of Paris which has dis-
appeared before the constructive activity of Hauss-
mann and Louis Napoleon. If old Paris had been
likely to remain a generation or two longer, it is
possible that we might scarcely have heard of
Méryon, because half the quality of his work is due
to the intensity of his affection for remains whose
destruction he foresaw with the most bitter regret,
as a near and irremediable misfortune which he had
no power to avert, But if an artist cannot save an



IO
CHARLES MÉRYON
old building which he loves, he may at least secure
a memorial of it, a memorial better than the fidelity
of the photograph, because it expresses not only the
beauty of the thing itself, but the pathetic affection
of the one human soul that cares for it. It became,
then, the object of this artist to make a series of
etchings in which the old tourelles and quaint streets
of Paris should be preserved for future times, and
when he undertook this task he had already made
himself the most accomplished architectural etcher,
not only of this century, but of all centuries; not
only of France, but of the world. The opportunity
for the exercise of Imperial encouragement was
exceptional and splendid; and if the Government
had known its duty, Méryon would have been com-
missioned to do perfectly, and on a far more exten-
sive scale, what he did imperfectly in the face of
absolute public indifference, and the stern possi-
bility of starvation. To do the French Government
justice, it knew the value of another extraordinary
man, Jules Jacquemart, and employed him precisely
on the kind of work for which nature intended
him; but it was less necessary to etch the guarded
treasures of the Louvre, which are kept in perfect
safety, than the habitations of the nation's fore-
fathers, habitations which private interest or public
order is levelling day by day.

II

CHARLES MERYON
So, without encouragement of any kind, this great
artist patiently laboured, etching with the strangest
and most novel union of sobriety of manner with
depth of poetical feeling. He printed a few copies
of his plates, and left them with different book-
sellers and dealers in engraving ; but the stream of
life rolled past in its ceaseless flow, and paid as
much attention to these jewels as the waves of the
Mississippi give to some lost treasure on its banks.
As an etcher Méryon is remarkable for great
certainty of hand combined with extraordinary
caution. When at work from nature, he stands,
and without support of any kind, holds both plate
and mirror in one hand, laying the lines with the
other, and so steadily that the most skilful etchers
marvel at his skill. No work ever done in the
world has been more absolutely honest, more free
from executive affectation or pride of method. He
has great subtlety and delicacy of observation, and
a perception of truth so clear that it is strange how
such bright insight can be compatible with any cloud
or malady of the mind. His work is sanity itself,
by its perfect and equal acceptance of various facts,
by its patience and steadiness in study, by its
caution and moderation in manner. Thus, as I
pointed out some years ago, Méryon is picturesque,
but not narrowly and exclusively picturesque; for
I 2
CHARLES MÉRYON
when a pure line occurs in a modern or Renaissance
building, he gives it with marked attention to its
especial quality of purity. It is, perhaps, to this
very capacity for appreciating purity that a certain
peculiarity of Méryon may be due, which has occa-
sioned a doubt whether he ought to be considered
a great etcher, in the strict sense, or a great original
engraver. He does not sketch so much or so freely
as good etchers usually do, and there is a severity
in his manner not always compatible with the ease
of true etching. Nevertheless, I class him amongst
true etchers on account of his frank use of the
explanatory line, which is the chief test; added
burin or dry-point work does not prove impotence
with the etching-point, and is little more than a sort


of glaze.
Considered psychologically, the work of Méryon
is highly curious. It is thoughtful, reflective,
intensely personal, and full of strange hints of a
passionate fantasy, secret and subdued. This
mental quality, far more than the manual dexterity
of the artist, is the secret of his inexhaustible charm.
He is a sort of enigma for us, which we are always
trying to solve. Victor Hugo, with the clear eye of
a poet, saw at once this mental fascination, and
saw that Méryon needed to be strengthened by all
possible encouragements in his great struggle with

C
13
CHARLES MÉRYON
sea.
the Infinite—the infinite of Paris, the infinite of the
This was said in Victor Hugo's peculiar way
-he can never write without some allusion to the
Infinite or the ocean-but in this case the word was
not inapplicable. Méryon has evidently been an
artist of vast and vague aspirations, though a dull
critic might be prevented from seeing this by the
unusual precision of his manner. Beyond the actual
buildings which he draws there are suggestions of
long and lonely meditation on life and nature, on
time and space, and the bewildering abysses of
immensity.
Le Stryge.—At an angle of one of the towers of
Notre-Dame there is a horned and winged demon
who perpetually contemplates Paris, his head resting
on his hands, and his elbows on a flat ledge of stone.
He looks down the Seine towards the pavilions of
the Tuileries, and his stony eyes have watched
through the long centuries the changes on its banks.
The face wears an expression of quiet and contented
observation; from the Middle Ages, when this
demon first looked from his lofty post, there has
been sin enough in the great city to afford him un-
interrupted satisfaction. He saw the massacre of
St. Bartholomew, and felt warm gladness in his
heart of stone whilst the chants of thanksgiving rose
musically in the choir below; nor was he less in-
14


CHARLES MÉRYON
wardly gratified when the slow processions of carts
took the nobles to the guillotine and the chanting
priests were silenced. Those uncouth ears have
heard the roar and tumult of revolution, and the
clamour of the near bells that shook the grey towers
in the hour of triumph, when the versatile priest-
hood praised God and the powers that be. Nor
have public crimes or public miseries been the
demon's only consolation. Night after night he
hears the low splash when the suicide leaps into the
water, and a steady continuous murmur of long
lamentation and blasphemy.
When Méryon took the Stryge for a subject, it
was with ideas of this kind. If we deduct the
malignant feeling which may be attributed to a
demon, the position of one who, from a lofty height,
surveys the life of a great city, is simply the position
of genius relatively to the multitude of men. And
Méryon himself, who is a genius of the order most
given to reflection and solitude, has not drawn his
demon without some considerable amount of sym-
pathy. Four ravens are flying about him in the free
air, like the dark and morbid thoughts that visit a
lofty but too much isolated mind; and thus, as we
know, has Méryon been himself assailed.
I am not quite sure whether the obviously false
tonality of this plate may not have been intentional,
15

CHARLES MÉRYON
a
as the same fault certainly was in some engravings
of Albert Dürer; but when a critic allows these
things to pass in a work which he admires, his
silence may be imputed to ignorance. The intense
black in the street under the tower of St. Jacques
destroys the impression of atmosphere; though at a
considerable distance it is as dark as the nearest
raven's wing, which cannot relieve itself against it.
This may have been done in order to obtain a certain
arrangement of black and white patches, but it seems
unfortunate and is certainly untrue. The tower of
St. Jacques is, however, very right and beautiful, and
so is the curious distance over the roofs.
La Pompe Notre-Dame. If the reader will refer
to Turner's “Rivers of France,” he will find a subject
called “The Hôtel de Ville and Pont d'Arcole,” in
which the picturesque object that engaged Turner's
attention and induced him to make the drawing is
evidently a curious building in the middle of the
river, and in the centre of the composition. This
building consists of a tower and two wings, and it is
entirely supported on a sub-structure of wooden
scaffolding. This is the pump which has furnished
a subject for Méryon. His remarkable precision of
hand, and his usually wise moderation in light and
shade, have never been better exemplified. Take,
for example, the exquisitely gentle curvature in the
16
CHARLES MÉRYON
three main lines of the tower, and the entire absence
of exaggerated blackness throughout the whole plate.
Many of the wall surfaces are in the shade, but it
is shade illuminated by reflection. The intricate
arrangement of the massive carpentry is expressed
with evident enjoyment and a strong sense of con-
struction.
L'Abside de Notre-Dame de Paris.—The tonality
here is somewhat less accurate than in the plate just
criticised, but the questionable passages are chiefly
in the bridge and houses; and the cathedral is a
wonderful piece of work. There are, no doubt,
many living engravers who could get quite safely
through pieces of architecture not less elaborate, and
many photographs have been taken from this very
position which, as copies of the building, are much
more mechanically perfect. The value of work of
this kind is due to an exquisite artistic sensitiveness,
which has presented the subject to us in such a way
as to give it poetical interest.
Tourelle, rue de la Tixéranderie, démolie en 1851.
-The general reader may feel interested in this
plate on account of its subject, which is one of those
picturesque corner-turrets that the Scottish architects
borrowed from the French, and which give so much
character to many an old tower north of the Tweed.
This was one of the finest examples which had


17

CHARLES MERYON
not
escaped destruction down to the middle of the
present century, and its demolition coincided with
the erection of the first Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.
From the artistic point of view this tourelle was
worth considerably more than Sir Joseph Paxton's
enormous shed, but its disappearance was
thought an event of much importance, except by a
few eccentric people, like Méryon, who do not always
estimate things by a tariff of material values.
Readers who intend to etch may find here much
profitable study in the explanatory use of lines which
constantly follow either the perspective of surfaces
or the direction of shadows; and the plate has the
additional advantage of showing, in a marked
degree, how moderate and refined is Méryon's
understanding of the picturesque. The stately turret
and the free foliage of the vine about its base would
have had charms for any sketcher, but Méryon alone
could have seen the full artistic availableness of the
modern chimneys and roof, and the contrasting value
of the ugly modern house to the left. The explana-
tory use of line has, in one point, been carried a little
too far. There is an attempt to render the appear-
ance of wood, by a somewhat puerile imitation of its
grain. It may be observed also that Méryon's
readiness to accept unpicturesque material has made
him a little too tolerant, when he gives us the bit of
a
a
18
CHARLES MÉRYON
wall in the foreground forming an acute-angled
triangle of the most painfully mechanical sort.
La Rue des Toiles, Bourges.-It is not easy to
procure the etchings of Méryon, which, for the most
part, are out of print, the plates having been destroyed;
but the “Rue des Toiles” was given by the etcher to
a friend of his, and I hired the copper for “The Fine
Arts Quarterly Review,” in which it appeared in
January 1864. The subject is a picturesque mediæval
street; and though the etching is not so good as
those mentioned above-for it has been over-bitten,
and there is some confusion in the tonality—it gives,
nevertheless, an idea of Méryon's qualities as a
mediævalist. Victor Hugo is known to be one of
his warmest admirers, and these quaint details have
much in common with Hugo's picturesque descrip-
tions.
Le Pont Neuf.-Early proofs of the latest state in
which all the dry-point work is given, show Méryon
quite at his best. The Pont Neuf is the most
picturesque of existing Parisian bridges; and how-
ever superfluous its projecting turrets may have
seemed to the utilitarian mind, they were always
delightful to artists. This plate has been engraved
for no other purpose than to show two of these
turrets to the very best possible advantage; they are
in full sunshine whilst all the rest of the plate is
19

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CHARLES MÉRYON
either in subdued middle tint or sombre depths of
shade. From the impenetrable gloom under the
massive arches to the aerial delicacy of the distant
street, there is the widest range of executive
resource; but whatever has been done either in
massive arch, or flowing water, or many-storeyed
houses, or clouded space of sky, has been done
always in honour of those two turrets on the bridge.
Even the third turret, that nearest us, has been
sacrificed to them and cast into intentional shade;
and when Méryon comes to the rounding of the far
projecting cornice, where the gleam of sunshine falls,
he follows every reflection with an indescribable
pleasure and care. The wonder is that the delighted
hand could work so firmly here, that it did not
tremble with the eagerness of its emotion and fail at
the very instant of fruition.
20

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