Excerpt from Sir Seymour Haden Painter-Etcher
To the superficial and unsympathetic observer an etching may appear a very simple and trifling thing, but in reality it is a most difficult thing to produce worthily. We have, alas, too many etchings - such as they are - but the world has never had enough really fine ones. Master-etchers of the first rank are and always have been very few indeed, and the master does not always rise to the height of a masterpiece. The masterpiece in art must be perfect, and perfect from every point of view: it must embody a noble scheme nobly expressed, and above all it must be entirely original and entirely personal to the artist who creates it.
These things being so, the genuine master in etching would simply be stupid if he were devoid of a proper sense of his own importance. Rembrandt must have known that he was a very great man; Van Dyck was the associate of kings and nobles; the unhappy Frenchman, Meryon, while slowly going mad from neglect and absolute hunger, yet indignantly spurned every aid that looked like charity; Whistler, through evil report and good report, has always insisted upon the dignity of the artist. This he never forgets even while waging his "never-ending, still-beginning" fights and quarrels.
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