CHAPTER VIII. HISTORY OF THE ETCHINGS

We have seen how Rembrandt the painter, after having risen to the foremost place among his fellow-craftsmen in Holland, fell a victim to the always unaccountable change of fashion that has cast a blight upon many another man. Now, however, that we come to consider his etched work, we have, to some extent, a different tale to tell. From the first the products of his needle seem to have been appreciated and sought after, in certain, though perhaps limited, circles. Houbraken mentions Clement de Jonghe, whose shrewd yet kindly face is found among the gallery of portraits etched by Rembrandt, Jan Pietersen Zoomer, and Pieter de la Tombe, as having made collections of his etchings; and in the inventory of the property left by the first of these at his death, on February 11th, 1679, we find a list of seventy-four plates etched by Rembrandt; but it is not therefore to be hastily concluded that Rembrandt himself ever made any important addition to his income by the sale of them.

Indeed, the chief foundation of the belief can be shown to be frail and untrustworthy. This is the familiar title of the etching, “Christ healing the Sick,” which has been known for many years as “The Hundred Guilder Print,” that having been, according to the story, the sum the artist obtained for a single proof. The amount, even if he had obtained it, was hardly excessive — some nine pounds; but the facts show clearly that he never did. He exchanged a copy, still in existence, with his friend Jan Zoomer, who has left in writing on the back of it, “Given me by my intimate friend Rembrandt in exchange for ‘The Pest’ of M. Anthony,” to which he may possibly have attached the value of a hundred guilders, though there is not a particle of evidence for even this. Gersaint, when making the catalogue, published in 1751, after his death, by Helle and Glomy, was informed that the famous proof was exchanged with a Roman merchant, and the equivalent, like Falstaff s men in buckram, had swelled to seven engravings, which were definitely valued at one hundred guilders; and thence the tradition and the name arose. What, one wonders, would the gossips, who gasped amazed at such a price, have thought could some seer have succeeded in making them believe that, little more than a hundred years later, in 1858, that very same proof with old Jan Zoomer’s writing still upon it would be competed for so fiercely at public auction, that M. Dutuit paid cheerfully for it eleven hundred pounds; while even that was not a record price, since another copy was sold the year before at the Palmer sale for eleven hundred and eighty.

Still, though this piece of evidence must be abandoned, there would seem to be no doubt that the etchings were admired even in his lifetime, and, from the fact that Clement de Jonghe and Zoomer were art-dealers, we may fairly conclude that part at least of their collections appertained to their stock-in-trade. It is scarcely probable, indeed, that such highly-finished works as the larger “Raising of Lazarus,” “Christ healing the Sick,” “Christ preaching,” “The Three Crosses,” “The Good Samaritan,” “The Three Trees,” and others, landscapes in especial, were carried out without any subsequent attempts on Rembrandt’s part to profit by them; and there is good reason for supposing that the portraits of Jan Uijtenbogaerd and Jan Cornelis Sylvius with their inscriptions and laudatory verses, were intended for sale among the followers and admirers of the two eminent ministers; but the fact remains that we can only assert with any confidence that two out of all the etchings were expressly made for publication, “The Descent from the Cross,” and the “Ecce Homo,” and neither of these, though signed by Rembrandt “cum privilegio,” as issuing from his studio, and executed under his directions, according to the custom of the day, was worked upon by him to any great extent.

The numerous other portraits, the four illustrations to Manasseh ben Israel’s work, Piedra Gloriosa, and that to Der Zeeværts-Lof, were doubtless commissions, but the payments were probably not large, since we found in the proposal made by Dirck van Cattenburch, in 1654, that an etched plate “not less finished than that of Six,” was estimated at no more than four hundred florins, which, considering the amount of work entailed, was not magnificent.

When we have recalled the partnership formally entered into between Hendrickje and Titus on December 15, 1660, which has already been explained in telling the story of the artist’s life, we have come to the end of the reasons for concluding that the artist made money by his etching needle.

Whence, then, it may be asked, the various proofs now in existence, the first and second, third and fourth states for which collectors pay such surprising prices, prices more often regulated by the rarity of the state than by its special artistic merits? Perhaps some of them were put into circulation by the firm of Hendrickje and Titus. There is, certainly, no mention of the plates in the inventory of the sale, and it is therefore possible that this pathetic little association for the support of a broken-down artist may have found it profitable in a small way to issue new impressions of these earlier completed plates, though it is significant in this connection, unless we can accept the theory suggested before, that Rembrandt’s eyesight was failing, that at the very time when etchings were most needed he ceased to produce them.

In a very large number of cases, I suspect, they were given as presents to any sympathetic soul who had enough taste to appreciate them for their merits, or intelligence enough to foresee that they might some day prove of value. In the case of a portrait, at any rate, we know that he gave proofs to his sitter as the work went on, for on one of the first portrait of Sylvius, done in 1634, there is a note in Rembrandt’s hand showing that it was one of four presented by him to the minister.

Others, again, would be given to fellow-artists, such as Lievensz, who etched also. Many undoubtedly came from the sixty portfolios of leather, which we find recorded in the inventory, where they had lain from the day when Rembrandt, having learnt the lesson or attained the effect he desired, had flung them carelessly aside to go on to some further problem. For, there seems little doubt that he never himself regarded them with any very serious consideration. They were for him only steps in his onward progress. He did them because he wanted to do them, without any thoughts of fame or profit, and he signed and dated them, or left them unsigned and undated, in the most haphazard and capricious way, good and bad alike, with the most complete indifference as to whether they were calculated to enhance his reputation or not. It was, therefore, by the inevitable irony of fate, that for these alone, for many years, was he judged worthy of remark. While Gerard de Lairesse in his Groote Schilderboek, published in 1714, was condescendingly assuring a listening public that Rembrandt’s paintings were not “absolutely bad,” Houbraken was recording the struggles of collectors to get possession of his etchings, and their consequent increase in price — struggles and increasings, which have gone on augmenting without intermission to the present day, until even a small representative collection of them is a luxury for the very rich alone, an absolutely perfect one of all the differing states unobtainable by a many times millionaire.

In the eighteenth century there were already famous collections of the etchings: such as those of de Burgy and van Leyden in Holland itself; of Marolles, Coypel, Silvestre, and Mariette in France; of Barnard, Sloane, Cracherode, Fawkener, and Lord Aylesford in England; and it was inevitable that the making of collections could not go on satisfactorily for long, unless there was some sort of general agreement as to what was and what was not to be included in them, so that before long the need for some catalogue to establish at any rate the preliminary basis of an agreement on disputed points became an absolute necessity.

Gersaint was the first to make the attempt, but died before his task was finished. His manuscript, however, was put up for sale, and bought by les Sieurs Helle and Glomy, as they call themselves upon the title-page of the volume in duodecimo which, after making the “necessary augmentations” of Gersaint’s material, they published at Paris in 1751. An English translation of this was published by T. Jefferys in London the following year, and four years later, in 1756, Pierre Yver, an art-dealer in Amsterdam, published in that city a “Supplément,” with additions and corrections. Forty years later these two works, collated and again translated into English, were the foundation of an amended catalogue by Daniel Daulby, published in London and Liverpool in 1796. A year later Adam Bartsch, keeper of the prints in the Library at Vienna, published there a catalogue in two octavo volumes, which to this day remains the chief standard of appeal, though Wilson, Charles Blanc, Vosmaer, Middleton, and others, have rejected some of the etchings which he accepted, and included others which he ignored.

There is no doubt that Bartsch was too generous in his admissions, but to what extent he carried his over-generosity is still a matter of dispute. The Chevalier de Claussin, writing in 1824, and borrowing freely, though without acknowledgment, from Bartsch, struck out 10, leaving 365; and Wilson, publishing in London in 1836, under the title of “an amateur,” while owning his obligations to Bartsch, rejected 6, but added others, making 369. Vosmaer, in 1877, counted 353; Middleton, in the following year, reduced these to 329; Charles Blanc, in the 1880 edition of his work, raised the number again to 353. M. de Seidlitz, in 1890, obtained and collated the opinions of all the best living authorities, and, after an ample discussion of doubtful points, accepted 260; while M. Legros, adopting heroic methods of criticism, will only admit 71 as being certainly by Rembrandt, with an additional 42 which might be, or 113 at the most.

What, it may well be asked by the bewildered amateur, is the reason of these surprising differences? Surely, he may well say, there must be some criterion to hold by. The answer is simple, if unsatisfactory: there is not, there never has been, there never can be. There is no style to judge by; for Rembrandt had half-a-dozen styles at least, and employed them all together or separately as he listed. The signature is no guide, for many beautiful works of his have none, and many that are not his bear forged ones. The subject cannot help us, for he treated alike the most sacred incidents and the grossest improprieties. The merit of the work is no less dubious ground for judgment; for while producing, over and over again, masterpieces of the art that have never been equalled, he at other times, through carelessness, indifference, or perhaps ill-health, turned out and left for future ages stuff which most far inferior men would have obliterated there and then. We can only decide each for ourselves that such or such a plate is in no way worthy of Rembrandt, but, unless we have the courage of M. Legros, we cannot go on to assert definitely that therefore it is not his.