PRINTED AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY form p-5 [xii-12-18 14cl THE Bulletin is published monthly by The New York Public Library at 476 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Subscription One Dollar a year, current single numbers Ten Cents. Entered at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., as second-class matter, February 10, 1897, under Act of July 16, 1894. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorised. Printed at The New York Public Library, 476 Fifth Avenue. Edmund L. Pearson, Editor. November 1918, Volume 22, Number 10. BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS VOLUME 22 NOVEMBER 1918 NUMBER II T THE WAR ZONE IN GRAPHIC ART HE Prints Division of The New York Public Library has arranged, in the Print Gallery (Room 321) in the Central Building, an exhibition of somewhat timely interest, to replace the one illustrating, "The Making of a Lithograph," and to extend into January, 1919. The posters of the new show bear the large-type title "The War Zone in Graphic Art," with a parenthetical explanation: "Etchings and other prints illustrating Eastern France and Belgium during the 17th-19th centuries." That quite definitely describes the exhibition. The pictures shown are not a selection from the Library's collection of views, but prints from the print room's portfolios, the modern ones mainly from the S. P. Avery Collection, that never-failing source, which implies that the cases in the Print Gallery are filled with the works of artists of repute. So we are brought, naturally, face to face with the expression of personality, and the exhibition, besides its obvious interest of subject, serves the print lover and those interested in art in general. Naturally, on the basis of selection indicated, one will not look for illustrations of all of even the important places lying within the present war zone. In other words it is the choice exercised by artists in days and generations before the present war, that fixes the limits and extent of this exhibition. Yet the very fact that the subject was the primary cause for admission, brought in so wide a range of prints that not only original etchings were included, but reproductive ones as well, not often exhibited since the days of their vogue, as well as wood-engravings and lithographs. There is a wide diversity in the pictures shown here; diversity in locality, in choice of subject, and in viewpoint of the individual artist. The list of places and artists clearly indicates this. [ 619 ] Here are shown localities that have become household words through the stirring events of the last four years, seen through the eyes of artists of various countries and periods. Here one may visit Antwerp with Wenzel Hollar, who depicted the pomp and circumstance of the conclusion of peace between Spain and the Netherlands on the market-place in 1648. Or one may go back a century farther, and see Duerer's sketch (shown in facsimile) of the city's water front, done with a remarkable grasp of Whistlerian expressiveness in empty space, and an evident appreciation of the pattern of interlaced rigging recalling to us some of Whistler's London plates. And there are nineteenth-century plates of bits of the city by Belgian artists, Henri Leys and Verhaert, by the Frenchmen Maxime Lalanne (that accomplished technician), Gaston de Latenay, Norbert Goeneutte, by that most summary of etchers, Jongkind, who shows the "Scheldt" or Escaut at Antwerp, at sunset, and by our own Samuel Colman. Come to Bruges under the guidance of the noted etcher of architectural subjects, A. H. Haig ("Belfry," 1913), or of F. H. Armington, or Beurdeley, or J. Celos ("The Dead City," 1911). Across "A Bridge over the Nethe at Lierre" with Marten van der Loo. To Malines with Hollar and Marten van der Loo, to Ghent (Frank Brangwyn, "Old Houses"), Tournai (Ernest George), Dixmude ("Church of St. Nicholas," by Brangwyn), and Tervueren, Boulenger's painting of which is interpreted by Theophile Chauvel, that master of reproductive etching and lithography. Hollar etched buildings and women's costume in Brussels, Duerer sketched the "Zoo" there, and J. T. J. Linnig, a Belgian artist, shows a mill in the quartier Leopold in 1866. Philip Zilcken, Dutch etcher and writer on art, did about a dozen plates in and near Brussels, Dinant and Verviers, the "Rocher Bayard" near Dinant, a bit “near Namur," the "Waterloo Road, near Brussels." So the artists, escaping at times from architecture and town-folk to the quiets of country life, will take you outside the city walls into the open, to hamlets and fields and orchards not on the war map at all. With them one wanders through the land seeing "Tamise on the Scheldt," "Vilvorde," "Calmpthort" and "Venlo" with C. Storm van 'sGravesande, who also takes us along the Meuse. The last named river, a couple of centuries earlier, had attracted van Goyen, whose painting was translated into etching by Lalanne. In Goyen's days, Teniers was etching pictures of Flemish peasant life, pictorial documents for the social history of the period, while in our own time Leys depicted a Flemish interior and reconstructed the printing office of Plantin, whose proofreaders were shown also in a wood engraving by Heinemann. Then across the border into France to see scenes on the Marne, by Charles Daubigny (etched by Lucien Gautier), Karl Daubigny (etched by Rodriguez), Paul Colin (wood engraving in colors), and Noel Masson (who etched, although his two hands were missing); on the Oise, by Daubigny (etched by C. A. Walker), and Brunet-Debaines; on the Somme, by Jules Dupré (lithograph), and Alphonse Legros; on the Doubs (near Verdun), by Brunet-Debaines. These artists pictured peaceful days on two rivers that have now witnessed such momentous battles. The very fact that some of the streams may start without, or flow out of the war zone, gives the beholder, if it pleases him, the feeling of being for the time a desultory saunterer through pleasant regions. So the list goes on. There are Rochebrune's "Pierrefonds," George T. Plowman's "Hotel de Ville, Arras," Norbert Goeneutte's "Cayeux," Lalanne's "Chateau Thierry" and "Chateau de Chaumont." Some of these places have figured in the war reports, others may have escaped direct contact with conflict. Amiens luckily did; its cathedral was etched by A. H. Haig and Camille Fonce, and lithographed by J. D. Harding. Similarly, Strasbourg, at the other end of the line, finds a place here. Hollar etched its cathedral, so did Haig and Octave de Rochebrune. Samuel Prout lithographed picturesque buildings there. And Goeneutte sketched the entrance to Mortefontaine in Lorraine. Rheims cathedral is here, interior and exterior, in etchings by Haig, Henri Toussaint, Vincent Randolph and George T. Plowman. The famous Notre Dame, of Paris, is the only landmark of Paris appearing in the present show, for while bombardment for a while brought the city within the dangers of war, her etched glories might well claim an entire exhibition. Such a one was held by the Library's prints division when it was still in the old Lenox Library Building. So Notre Dame alone appears here, but as seen by a number of artists, Callot, F. T. Simon, Haig, Toussaint, Rochebrune, Lalanne, Plowman, E. L. Warner, and of course Charles Meryon, whose beautiful "Abside" stands unrivaled. Next to the subject of the prints (as to which no pretension to completeness is made), the interest of this exhibition lies in the illustration of such national and individual differences in point of view and expression as form the very essence of art. And the illustration, furthermore, of the adaptation of personal style to the medium in hand in such manner as to exemplify the eternal law of appropriateness. It seems not amiss to note also that many of the prints shown are by artists whose work is seldom seen, and that the exhibition may not be without its suggestions to the collector of moderate means. -FRANK WEITENKAMPF. |