XVIII. CAMERON.

THE amateur has had the opportunity of looking lately a good deal at the prints of a young Scottish artist, Mr. D. Y. Cameron, who has himself, to do him justice, looked long and much at the prints of the masters. Though young, he has already been prolific, and has wrought not only many plates, but in various methods. Of course, I like his work as against that of men who, however gifted in other mediums of expression, are not essentially etchers. For Mr. Cameron is essentially an etcher—a fine engraver on the copper, above all things. Yet I cannot feel that any great proportion of his work, thus far, has quite enough originality or freedom; and if he is to live and last as an original engraver—as I believe he may—he will have to acquire these virtues in yet larger measure. Meanwhile, here are a few comments on certain of the best of his most studiously wrought pieces, of which even the least attractive do not lack a workmanlike accomplishment.

“The Arch,” a composition of curious shape—a tall, narrow plate—is a performance of solidity and brightness, although it shows that Mr. Cameron is apt to finish to the corners with a thoroughness too uniform or obvious—to be, indeed, like Mr. C. J. Watson, a little too positive and too material. In the “Flower Market,” with its fleeting lights and shades, he leaves in part this positiveness. He makes an interesting experiment, but, after all, recalls the theme to which he addresses himself, only enough to assure you that the experiment has not been made in the medium that is fittest for it. “Colour, colour, colour!” you say. “The Palace, Stirling”—a dark forbidding interior—has certainly about it a grim Celtic imagination, and is individual in that. The oppositions of light and shade are at once strongly marked and skilful—their distribution quite successfully studied—in “White Horse Close.” “The Dolphins” (1892) is full of vigour and vitality. Even better, perhaps, is “St. John Street, Stirling;” because its draughtsmanship is at once freer and more hesitating—not fixed and petrified, that is, but trembling with the semblance of life. And in the background of “A Rembrandt Farm,” Mr. Cameron has wonderful reminiscences, both of the maste touch and of his way of looking at the wide-stretched landscape that he cared for the most. Nor does the plate suffer perhaps from being for once a deliberate imitation, successfully accomplished. Yet I admire Mr. Cameron more—my hope for his Future is more certain—when I hold in my hand a good impression of his “Border Towers”—a composition of his own North country—a thing in which the inspiration has been very personal, and the fine work of detail has been obtained at no sacrifice of noble breadth.