Page:Chats on old prints (IA chatsonoldprints00haydiala).pdf/105

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tion in his own day. He died in an asylum in 1868. In a fit of anger he destroyed all his copper-plates, and early impressions of his prints are very rare. There is a very marked difference in the quality of the various states and a corresponding difference in the prices paid for them. L'Abside de Nôtre Dame de Paris, etched in 1853, in its first state is worth £350, in its third state only £6. It is possible to pick up the third state of Le Pont Neuf for 30s.

Other well-known French etchers are Jules Jacquemart (1837-1880), whose delicacy of treatment and the fine rendering of texture entitle him to be regarded as the nineteenth-century Hollar. He executed a number of wonderful etchings to illustrate his father's L'Histoire de la Porcelaine, as well as a great many plates after pictures of well-known masters. His Head of Christ, after Leonardo da Vinci, is a masterpiece of delicacy and refinement. Felix Bracquemond, Charles Waltner, Edmond Yon, Chauvel, Koepping, and Boulard have all done masterly interpretations of pictures. Of Gaucherel (1816-1885), whose genius raised the interpretative school to a high level, we illustrate a fine etching after Dupré, entitled Les Environs de Southampton. (Facing p. 72).

Maxime Lalanne (1827-1886), one of the greatest of modern French landscape etchers, Appian, Le Rat, Helleu and Charles Jacque are original etchers, whose work should not be beyond the reach of the beginner whose hesitancy as to prices is only natural. We give an illustration of an etching by A. Queyroy, entitled À Mestras, which is masterly in its simplicity.