THE EARLY ETCHINGS

Bléry as an etcher has little interest for us, but he was sufficiently skilled to impart in six months a sound technique to a pupil, whose interest in the art was fostered by the study of old etchings and especially those of the Dutch etcher of architecture and marine subjects, Renier Zeeman (1623-1663), which he used to pick up for a few sous in the boxes outside the printsellers’ shops. Meryon’s first etching of all was a head of Christ, founded on a miniature after Philippe de Champaigne; the only impression known of this etching is in the Howard Mansfield collection at New York. During the years 1849-50 he produced a number of copies after Loutherbourg, Salvator Rosa, Karel du Jardin and others, but Zeeman fascinated him above all in the double capacity of an etcher of marines and of views of old Paris, and it was from his style that he learnt most. While still with Bléry his mind is said to have been slightly unhinged by an unfortunate love affair with the daughter of a restaurant keeper, who would have nothing to say to him. In solitary wanderings about the old streets of Paris and meditations in his garret in the Rue St. Etienne-du-Mont, he formed plans for his series of etchings of old Paris and began to make studies for them. As early as 1850 one of these masterly plates, Le Petit Pont (plate 7), was finished.

In making his studies of old houses and churches, Meryon seldom made a complete drawing on the spot. He would go every day at the same hour and make minutely finished studies of details on small bits of paper, which he either stuck together or made another drawing from them. He used an exceedingly sharp, hard pencil; the astonishing fineness of the line that he produced with it may be well seen in two early drawings of Rouen Cathedral from the Seine in the British Museum, which also possesses some of the drawings of architecture at Bourges, a place which first fascinated him on a visit made about 1848. In drawing architecture Meryon always worked upwards from the bottom of his object, saying that buildings were begun from the foundation and the artist should follow the same method as the builder. In the same way he would draw men from the feet upwards, saying that they must always be planted firmly on their feet before they began to do anything. Le Petit Pont well illustrates another peculiarity of his practice in drawing architecture. He deliberately renounced any competition with the camera of the photographer, and claimed the right to arrange the different parts of what he drew in the manner best calculated to convey a certain impression, while preserving the utmost exactness in the representation of detail in each part. It has been observed, by those who know the spot well, that the towers of Notre-Dame, which dominate the whole composition, are much too high in the etching in regard to their actual dimensions and to the laws of perspective. After taking a drawing from very low down, near the edge of the water, Meryon drew the towers again from the level of the street, as the passer-by would habitually see them, and fitted this drawing with great skill into the former one, constructing by this combination a composition which produced the desired effect of impressive and majestic height, all the details being absolutely accurate, though on reflection it might be discovered that they could not all be seen at once.

Le Petit Pont is the first of his mature works, and marks an astonishing advance upon the exercises in copying other etchers which, with the exception of a few important portraits, are all that had preceded it. “Unimportant,” his own portrait, seated before an easel, could never have been, at least as a document, though it may have been immature, but we cannot judge of its quality, for Meryon destroyed it and preserved no proofs, and we only know of its existence from his own statement recorded by Burty. The only proof of his portrait of Eugène Bléry was destroyed by Bléry’s wife because she did not like it. Thus the only portrait of his quite early time which is actually extant is that of Edmond de Courtives, and of this only one impression, formerly in the Macgeorge collection, can actually be traced. It is a little medallion containing the head, reduced from an etching which according to Meryon’s own account was originally a half length, in which a violin and some chemical apparatus were introduced beside the sitter. It was an original etching, based on a drawing from life by Meryon himself.

All the other portraits are of much later date, one belonging to the year 1856, the rest to 1861 or 1862 (plate 47). None of them are original etchings; they are founded on drawings by others, old prints or photographs, in one case on a medallion by David d’Angers; they are quite insignificant and we shall have no need to mention them again. The other etchings of 1849-50 would have no interest for us if anyone else but Meryon had etched them. It is only the four oblong subjects of Paris and its vicinity after Zeeman that count for something more, because they show very plainly on what Meryon formed his taste, and anticipate, in the proportions and ordonnance of the plate and in the treatment of river boats and of the little figures on the banks of the Seine that we see in Le Pavillon de Mademoiselle and in La Rivière de Seine et l’angle du Mail, habits that we shall soon come to regard, when we consider the original etchings of Paris, as specially characteristic of Meryon himself.