Herman A. Webster
By MARTIN HARDIE
“Did you ever see a barber sharpen his razor? That’s what it wants—the decision and the smacks.” That is one of the many quaint remarks that old John Varley used to hurl at the pupils who came to him for lessons in the complete art of painting in water-color. It is a remark very appropriate to the vast quantity of etchings, mechanically correct, but unimpassioned and uninteresting, which are produced to-day. There are wonderfully few etchers whose work strikes a note of imagination and individuality, and appeals by its force and directness, its decisions and its smacks. One of that small company is Mr. Herman A. Webster.
An artist’s life is written in his work, and the cold facts of his biography are of little real importance. To some extent, however, they act as a commentary upon his productions, and at the worst they serve to satisfy the not unpardonable curiosity which impels all of us to inquire into the age and life-history of any man whose pictures or prints awaken our instant sympathy. So I put here a few outlines of Mr. Webster’s career, merely the mile-stones that mark the route along which he has proceeded. It has been a career of strenuous activity, for the artist who now prints his finely-wrought plates in his studio in the Rue de Furstenberg at Paris (the street of which Whistler made a lithograph in 1894) has graduated at a famous university, traveled round the world, spent two years in commercial life, toiled as general reporter to a big daily paper, worked in a coal-mine, and acted as assistant cashier in a bank. And the tale of his years is only just over thirty, for he was born in 1878. Need I add—for an English reader it would be quite superfluous—that Mr. Webster is an American, with New York as his native city?
Mr. Webster came into the world with an innate love of art. In his school-days, before he had received any instruction in drawing, he made posters, that were perhaps crude but not ineffective, for the school games; and at Yale he was one of the editors and a valued illustrator of the Yale Record. This love of art was fostered by a visit to the 1900 Exposition at Paris, where the genius loci has a stronger spell for the young artist than anywhere else upon earth. Studios and restaurants of the Quartier Latin are fragrant with great memories, still haunted by the mighty spirits of the past: Louvre and Luxembourg are filled with the living realities that abide. Amid the enchantment of this artistic atmosphere, with all its traditions and associations, Mr. Webster lingered for some months, and then set out on a trans-Siberian tour to the Orient, staying long enough in Japan and China for his natural instinct to be quickened by the marvelous art which has exerted so strong an influence on the Western world. On returning home his desire to adopt art as his life-calling was checked by family opposition. Here in England—for I write as one of Mr. Webster’s English admirers—many a boy artist has been thwarted by a foolish antipathy in the home circle to art in the abstract, but for a parent in the New World the conviction must be even more sincere that business is the only lucrative profession, while art is at least something precarious, if not a downward road to poverty and starvation. And so, at his father’s wish, Mr. Webster, in the office of the Chicago Record-Herald and elsewhere, served two years of bondage to commerce. Determination, however, won its way at last, and in February, 1904, he set out to Paris with the family consent to “try it for a year.” That year is still continuing.
Seven months during 1904 were spent at the Académie Julien under Jean Paul Laurens, in study from the nude; and that is the only academic instruction which Mr. Webster has received. A few months after his arrival in Paris, chance led him to the Bibliothèque Nationale, where he saw some of Meryon’s etchings, and fell instantly under the spell of the great artist whose sinister needle first revealed the mysterious and somber poetry of Paris and the Seine. From Meryon and from books he forthwith taught himself to etch, receiving no outside instruction, but evolving his own methods till he attained mastery of the “teasing, temper-trying, yet fascinating art”—a mastery the more valuable and complete in that it was based on his own experience. A first attempt was made from his studio window in the Rue de Furstenberg, and some copperplates went with him on his autumn holiday at Grez, that “pretty and very melancholy village” in the Forest of Fontainebleau, where Robert Louis Stevenson met the romance of his life. As the first-fruits of this holiday three little etchings won their way into the next summer’s Salon—the Rue de l’Abbaye, The Loing at Grez, and The Court, Bourron, the last being the forerunner of several subjects of similar type. At the Salon also was hung a large oil-painting of still life, a study of fabrics and porcelain; but though color will no doubt claim allegiance again, Mr. Webster has been too closely held in thrall by etching to essay further experiments in the painter’s craft.
A pilgrimage to Spain in the spring of 1905 was the source of several spontaneous and effective plates, among them St. Martin’s Bridge, Toledo, and Mirada de las Reinas, Alhambra. Up to this point Mr. Webster’s work may be considered, in a large measure, tentative and experimental, but from 1906 onward he has found in Normandy—at Pont de l’Arche and Rouen—at Bruges, and above all in Paris, the inspiration for a series of plates noteworthy for their fine craftsmanship and their expression of individuality. They have won him the recognition of connoisseurs and public without his passing through any period of undeserved obscurity. At the Paris Salon, at the Royal Academy, and in his native land, his etchings have constantly been exhibited and admired. Nor must I forget to add that in 1908 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, which, under the presidency of its veteran founder, Sir Francis Seymour Haden, has done so much to foster the revived art of etching.
It is of some of the chief works produced and exhibited during the last three years that I have now to speak, and in doing so may perhaps indicate a few leading characteristics of the etcher’s work. His chief delight is in the nooks and corners of old-world thoroughfares and culs-de-sac, where deep shadows lurk in the angles of time-worn buildings, and sunlight ripples over crumbling walls, seamy gables, and irregular tiled roofs. Of such is a series of subjects found in old Rouen—the St. Ouen; the Rue du Hallage, where the cathedral spire towers high above old timbered houses; and that charming plate with the title Old Houses, Rouen, a quaint corner of tenements whose high-pitched roofs stand propped against one another for all the world like a castle of cards. The etcher of this and of the St. Ouen was welcomed with warm sympathy by the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, which said that “never before has there been so fervent and skilled an interpreter of the bowed timber and crumbling plaster of the old houses of Rouen, which line the street ending in the cathedral with its pointed spire against the open sky.” And so we pass to two courtyard scenes—belonging, like the Rouen subjects, to the year 1906—the Cour, Normandie, and Les Blanchisseuses. In both we find the artist becoming more adept in using broad and balanced disposition of light and shade to give not merely chiaroscuro but the suggestion of actual color, and more skilled in adding exquisiteness of detail to refined truth of visual impression. Les Blanchisseuses, in particular, with its rich mystery of shadow, with its sunshine falling on white walls and lighting the seamed interstices of plaster and timber, has an indefinable charm that, for myself at any rate, makes it a high-water mark in Mr. Webster’s art. Of similar type is the Old Butter Market, Bruges, where a cobbled street curves beneath a shadowed archway; and then for variety you step from Bruges la Morte, from the silent cobbles that centuries ago were a busy thoroughfare for ringing feet, to the Bruges of to-day. It is Bruges in a very different aspect, this free and spirited study made on July 27, 1907, on the day of the Fête de l’Arbre d’Or, giving a quick impression of gay holiday crowds, of banners fluttering against the open sky, and of the “belfry old and brown” whose carillon inspired America’s poet, as its tall form and fretted outline have inspired the American etcher of whom I write. This Bruges en Fête, and Paysanne, a clever and direct figure-study of an old peasant at Marlotte, come as an episode of pleasing variety in Mr. Webster’s work, and tend to show that, though he has his preferences, he is not really fettered by any limitation of subject or treatment.
It is but natural that an artist of Mr. Webster’s temperament, a devoted admirer of Meryon, should become absorbed in Paris herself and endeavor to put upon copperplate the “poésie profonde et compliqué d’une vaste capitale.” The Bruges and Rouen plates showed Mr. Webster to be keenly susceptible to the magnetism and charm of medieval tradition, but Paris, steeped in sentiment even more than Rouen or Bruges, was to rouse a still greater warmth and feeling. He began by searching out those picturesque streets in the old quarters that have survived the wholesale demolishment of Baron Haussmann, a name hated by artists as that of Granger by lovers of books. The Rue Brise Miche found its way to the Royal Academy, and was also honored by publication in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (July, 1907). Closely akin to it in restful balance of composition and in fine shadow effect is the Rue de la Parcheminerie—of special value now, for the old street has disappeared largely since the making of the plate. La Rue Cardinale has affinity of general treatment, and is not the less interesting for an amazing tour de force in the rendering of color and texture in the striped blind over a shop-front. A fourth plate, perhaps even finer than any of these in its force, directness, and concentrated simplicity, is the Rue Grenier sur l’Eau. There is much of Meryon in its clear, crisp line-work. Some day perhaps these loving studies of the old Paris of Balzac may be gathered in a series illustrating the “Quartier Marais,” and published in an édition de luxe with descriptive text by the etcher. Let us hope that this may come to pass, for the buildings that Mr. Webster depicts are far more than a prosaic record of architectural features. There is a spiritual and human suggestiveness behind the mortar and bricks of his pictures: as a poet of his own nation has it, they are “latent with unseen existences.” He has appreciated the fact that etching—an art hedged in by limitations and depending upon power of suggestion—is the one art that can give at once those delicate lines, those broad shadows, those crumbling bits of texture. The lover of etching can regard his subject with indifference, and take full joy in the soft play of sunlight, the fine choice of line, the effective massing of light and shade.
Another plate of this “Quartier Marais” series is a noble representation of Notre Dame seen from an unusual aspect. It is a drawing from near the Hôtel de Ville and shows the splendid mass of the cathedral rising above the irregular houses that face the Quartier Marais and the Quai aux Fleurs. There is freedom and charm in the treatment of the foreground, where a little tug puffs along the river and the big barges move cumbrously under the lee of the near bank, and in the middle distance where the light plays pleasantly over the old houses; but the roof of the cathedral itself, put in with unpleasing rigidity of line, comes like cold fact in the middle of romance. It is as though Meryon here had imposed his weakness as well as his strength upon Mr. Webster, for in the Morgue, for instance, the one small blemish is the ruled precision of the lines upon a roof. A fitting companion to this vision of Notre Dame is Le Pont Neuf, another of the etcher’s largest and most distinguished plates. The stern solidity of the bridge, with its massive masonry, its corbeled turrets, and its deeply shadowed arches, makes pleasing contrast with the irregular sky-line of the sunlit houses that rise beyond.
It may be said of all Mr. Webster’s etchings—and perhaps there could be no higher praise—that each possesses the faculty of provoking fresh interest. That is certainly the case with four of his most recent plates. One is an interior of St. Saturnin, Toulouse, majestic and stately, full of suggestive mystery in the religious light that falls with soft touch upon the pillars, throws into relief the dark masses of the choir-stalls, and strives to penetrate the dim recesses of the vaulted roof. St. Saturnin will be among the rariora of the collector, for the plate unfortunately broke when twelve proofs only had been printed.
The artist’s subtle perception of light and his refined draughtsmanship have been used to singular advantage in the Ancienne Faculté de Médecine, 1608. One is grateful to him for his fine record of this domed building that was a little gem of Renaissance art, though there is a note of sadness in the substructure of balks and struts set at its base by the ruthless hand of the destroyer.
Gothic canopies and tracery are drawn with loving care in the Porte des Marmousets, St. Ouen, Rouen, but here again it is the mystery of shadow in the deep porch that supplies the true theme. A church porch has also supplied the subject of one of Mr. Webster’s latest works, Notre Dame des Andelys. The ordinary observer will delight in the print for its beautiful rendering of a noble fragment of architecture. Those who have real knowledge of etching will appreciate it still more for its clever biting and for its subtle delicacy of line so cunningly used for the indication of stone, glass, and woodwork with their different surfaces and textures.
That plate of Notre Dame des Andelys, though not the most instantly engaging, is perhaps the most accomplished which the artist has produced. It is in this accomplishment that from the coldly critical point of view I see an indication—a hint only—of possible danger. Here, and to some extent in the Pont Neuf and the Rue Grenier, the careful, tense, concentrated work shows almost too disciplined a self-control. Close study of these prints gives just a touch of the irritation that comes from watching the monotonous perfection of a first-class game-shot or golfer, bringing a malicious desire for some mistake or piece of recklessness. The true etching always appeals in some degree by its spice of adventure, by some happiness of accident, and so while the Pont Neuf and the Notre Dame des Andelys rouse full admiration and respect for their splendid artistry, the more haphazard methods of the Rue Brise Miche and Les Blanchisseuses touch a far deeper note of sympathy. They have in them the breezy, natural oratory that is often so much more stirring than the fluent, polished periods of the accomplished speaker. But even where Mr. Webster is most precise in his articulation, most resolute in his adherence to familiar truths, he always combines with this a personal aspect and a power of selection that, disregarding the commonplace and petty, lends poetry to the interpretation. His “careful” work is very far removed from the cold and careful work of the ordinary uninspired craftsman.
In studying the work of a young etcher—and Mr. Webster is still young as an etcher—it is almost always possible to trace certain influences which, quite legitimately, have acted upon his choice of subject and his technique. In one of his first etchings, The Court, Bourron, the Whistler influence is frankly apparent. Les Blanchisseuses is in no sense an imitative plate, but I should have said it was the work of a man who knew Whistler’s Unsafe Tenement by heart. And there comes in the critic’s danger of leaping to rash conclusions, for Mr. Webster tells me he never saw that print by Whistler till long after his etching was made. For the Meryon influence, which is clearly apparent in much of his work, Mr. Webster makes no apology. Nor need he do so; for if he reminds us, here a little of Whistler, there a little of Meryon, there is always a large measure of himself besides. The true artist lights his torch from that of his predecessors: it is his business to carry on great traditions. “I have done my best simply to learn from him, not to steal” —that is Mr. Webster’s own expressive way of putting it.
Mr. Webster has not learned from Meryon at the cost of his own individuality, and one reason for the freshness that characterizes his work is that he is one of those who like to transfer their first impressions of nature direct to the plate in the open air. With very few exceptions, that is how his etchings have been made. A certain amount of work is necessarily done afterward in the retirement of the studio, but the straightforward method of rendering nature gives a vividness and spontaneity that careful work from intermediate studies in pencil or color can rarely produce. This spontaneity is the very essence of good etching, for with etching, as with water-color, its highest charm is inevitably troubled by mechanical labor; it is essentially a method of which one feels that “if ’twere done, ’twere well done quickly.” The etcher should no more be able to stay the quick gliding of his needle in the middle of a line than the skater to stand still upon the outside edge. And I think that the etcher who works straight from nature is more apt to search out the notes and accents of character and to seize upon those structural lines which are a fundamental necessity to his work.
Another chief excellence in Mr. Webster’s work lies in the fact that from the first he has been his own printer. He is no believer in the principle followed by many other etchers of biting their plate and leaving it to some one “with the palm of a duchess” to do the rest. Patient acquisition of craftsmanship is bound to tell, for the paid printer, be he never so skilled, cannot hope to understand an artist’s intentions quite so well as the artist himself. Mr. Webster, however, has no need of any artifice; there is no trace in his etchings of the meretricious printing which Whistler condemned as “treacly.” Light and shade enter into charming alliance in his prints, but line is always of the confederacy, and it is to purity of line that the shadows which tell so strongly owe their strength. In the very depths of them there is always a luminous gloom, never a trace of the harshness and opacity that come from slurred workmanship and reliance upon printer’s ink.
Perhaps I have said too much already, for Mr. Webster’s work is well able to speak for itself. But there is one noteworthy feature, common to all his plates, that claims attention, and that is his power of rendering sunlight. If he loves dark and dingy thoroughfares with dilapidated roofs and moldering plaster, it is for the sake of those quaint shadows that peep from their recesses and climb the high walls, and still more for the patches of brilliant, quivering sunlight to which the shadows give so full a value. He seems to hear, like Corot, the actual crash of the sun upon the wall—“l’éclat du soleil qui frappe.”