The Water-Colors and Drawings of Sir Seymour Haden, P.R.E.
By H. NAZEBY HARRINGTON
Author of “The Engraved Work of Sir Francis
Seymour Haden, P.R.E.”
As an etcher the work of Sir Seymour Haden is known to all lovers of art the wide world over, and not least in the United States, but his general capacity as an artist in other forms of expression is less well known, partly from lack of opportunity and partly from the very limited amount of material.
It must never be forgotten that art was not the main business of his life; it was but an occasional and fitful relaxation in a life devoted to another profession and full of other and varied interests. The wonder is, not that his artistic work was so limited, but that it was so great and so successful.
When a medical student in Paris, instead of spending his evenings in the usual frivolities of the Quartier Latin, he attended the classes of the Government School of Art, which were held in the same building as the School of Medicine. This was done, not from any positive love for art, but rather with the fixed idea that such study would train his powers of observation and make the hands more alert to obey the impulses of the will, and in this way help him in his surgical work. What he dissected he drew, what he drew he modeled, and in this way obtained a remarkable knowledge of anatomy and some facility in the technique of graphic art.
In this way he got into the habit of using drawing as a sort of shorthand, and so, when in 1844 he traveled in Italy, his diaries were filled with sketches rather than verbal descriptions—sketches that unfortunately have been too generously scattered.
While in Italy he met, and spent some time in the company of, Duval le Camus, a capable French artist who painted a good deal in water-color, and from him no doubt he picked up some knowledge of that medium. In Naples and its neighborhood they spent many happy days sketching together.
During the next fourteen or fifteen years Seymour Haden had not much time for the practice of art. His professional work took up all his time and vigor, but he always took a great interest in art and artists and counted many artists among his friends. He was appointed Surgeon to the Department of Science and Art at South Kensington, and became a collector of etchings by the old masters, not merely for the sake of acquisition but rather for the purpose of study and comparison. He also became the possessor of many pictures and water-color drawings, amongst others of several by Turner; and so, when in 1858 his young brother-in-law J. M. Whistler returned from France with his recently etched plates and his inciting tales of work in the Paris studios, Haden became readily infected and took up etching again, with the result we all know. Thenceforward, whenever a rare afternoon’s holiday could be stolen, or a few moments spared between the casts of the line during the annual vacation devoted to fishing, or on the rarer occasions of a continental holiday, the copper plate or the sketching block was brought into use. And so we find sketches done on the Thames and the Ribble, the Teivy, the Test and the Spey; in Holland and in Germany, in Spain and Madeira; at Chatsworth, in the old towns of Rye and Winchelsea, and above all in the fascinating Isle of Purbeck—sketches done for his own pleasure or for his friends, with never a thought of placing them before either the critic or the purchaser.
The earliest sketch that I have seen is one dated 1841. It is in pen and sepia and represents an early morning execution outside the Old Bailey. At a first glance it might be mistaken for an etching by Cruikshank. It measures only three and one half by two and one fourth inches, but is masterly in its drawing, and marvelous in its suggestiveness of a large crowd.
The drawings done in 1844 in France and Italy vary from mere thumb-nail sketches to comparatively finished drawings. Some of them in their carefulness and decision resemble the early drawings of Turner. Two or three figure sketches, notably portraits of Duval le Camus and the Marquis de Belluno (two of his companions), are very expressive and full of character.
While in Rome, through the introduction of the Marquis de Belluno, Haden had many interviews with Pope Gregory XVI, and during two or three of them he took the opportunity of sketching, on one of his shirt cuffs, a somewhat elaborate portrait of His Holiness. The Pope very kindly professed not to notice what the artist was doing until the portrait was finished. He then quietly remarked that he “now understood why M. Haden had attended at three audiences without a change of linen.” One would give much to see this portrait (which Sir Seymour always said was an excellent one), but it has disappeared, having been lent to a friend and never returned.
The drawings done after 1858 were much broader in style than the early sketches, and vary in method, being in lead pencil, pen and ink, chalk, charcoal, and water-color. Thrown off in a moment of inspiration, as a poet would throw off a lyric, he chose the material which chanced to be at hand. Some are on sheets of writing paper, and many valuable ones are on perishable blotting paper. Here and there among these “slight” sketches are specimens that in their economy of line, their stamp of decision, and their interpretative insight, suggest the work of his great master Rembrandt. What strikes one above all is their vigor and “bigness.” There is no dainty indecision about them; they go straight for the heart of the subject, giving the vigorous impression of a vigorous mind. They do not give all that could be said on the subject, but they give all that he feels is best worth saying. They make an intellectual appeal to the mind and do not tire with unnecessary platitudes.
The water-color drawings show a good but scarcely a great colorist. They are in the “grand” manner and the best of them have a fine atmospheric quality, as in the Dinkley Ferry here, which reminds one of a good De Wint. The Course of the Ribble is probably one of the most finished drawings he ever did, and shows to the highest degree of what he was capable in this medium when time allowed and when loving care was exercised. It is wonderfully mellow, good in color, and true in drawing, but has less of the white heat of inspiration:—I envy the fortunate possessor! The Lancashire River, a drawing of the same subject as the etching with the same title, is perhaps his finest piece of color.
But it is in his large charcoal drawings of the end of the seventies that he rises to his greatest heights,—in the sketches done around Swanage in the south of Dorsetshire, and at Chatsworth, and two or three drawn from the stores of his memory. What a revelation it was to me when—I scarcely like to count how many years ago—I first passed into that peaceful little “garden room” that looked out upon the old-time bowling green at Woodcote Manor and saw around its walls some four and twenty of these large charcoal drawings! It was as though some new planet swam into my ken! I had never seen so much suggested with such simple means. Two or three hours’ work with a sheet of rough paper, a piece of charcoal, and a mezzotint scraper! Heath and woodland, sea cliff and river glen, radiant light and quivering mist, houses sleeping in the sun and mysterious shadows lurking in the corners of the quaint old kitchen or the romantic ruin, or lying full length before the giant boles of centuries-old oaks; all suggested with equal ease and magic mastery! Many and many an hour did I afterward spend in that little treasure-house, ever finding fresh beauties revealed to me, and learning through them to see in Nature much that had previously been hidden from me. Haden’s etchings had proved him to be a great master in line, these drawings proved him to be almost equally great in tone. What particularly strikes one is the variety and transparency of his shadows. They are not black patches, but receding planes of varying densities. And what atmospheric quality they have! Driving mist and slanting rain, and sun rays penetrating the moisture-laden air, as though by a magician, are fixed for us on paper.
The origin of many of these drawings has been described by Sir Seymour himself in an article written some years ago in Harper’s Magazine, “On the Revival of Mezzotint as a Painter’s Art.” With the idea that he could use mezzotint as he had done etching, face to face with Nature, he had taken a previously grounded plate to the bank of the River Test and attempted to scrape upon it what he saw before him. The result was the plate numbered 234 in my catalogue (The Test at Longparish No. 3), interesting, but not wholly satisfactory and incomplete in intention. This proved that, unlike etching, mezzotint was too slow a process with which to work from nature at a single sitting, and a return on a later day only proved that the natural effect had changed, or that the artist was in a different phase of mind or not in the humor to complete the original impression. So instead of taking a grounded plate out with him he took a sheet of rough paper which had been rubbed all over with charcoal, this black surface corresponding to the mezzotint ground upon the copper plate, and on this prepared surface he scraped away the lights. As will be readily understood, this softer material could be much more rapidly manipulated than the harder copper, and so he found that in two or three hours the desired effect could be obtained. His intention was to reproduce in the studio and at his leisure the effects of these studies upon the copper plate. And so, with modifications, in several instances he did—I say with modifications, for it was almost impossible for him to closely copy even his own work. The Salmon Pool on the Spey provided the motif for the mezzotint plate with the same title (H. 250), and more closely of the little Salmon River, which served as a frontispiece to Dr. Hamilton’s book on “Fly Fishing.” The Encombe Woods supplied the subject for the two plates H. 218 and 219, which were intended to be a combination of etching and mezzotint, but the latter part of the project was never carried out. This too was the case with Early Morning (H. 244) and By the Waters of Babylon (H. 245), Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (H. 210) and A Study of Rocks (H. 211), all of which were etched or dry-pointed from charcoal drawings. The only important plates inspired by these drawings that were fully completed, were Evening Fishing, Longparish (H. 239), An Early Riser (H. 240), Grayling Fishing (H. 241), and The Pillar of Salt (H. 246); but they are sufficient to prove what a series of masterpieces we have lost through the dimming of the eye and the numbing of the hand by relentless Age.
However, we must be thankful for what we have, and the regret one has that these drawings should be scattered in different directions, is tempered by the hope that by one of the marvelous photographic processes of to-day this wonderful series of visions may be reproduced, and so again brought together for all of us who love beautiful things, and who reverence the master who produced them.