Page:The Etchings of Charles Meryon.djvu/30

 "Cieux," "Amour," and "Bonheur," are printed in blue. Then follows L'Abside (plate 22), the justly famous masterpiece for which higher sums are paid to-day than for any other etching except some of Rembrandt's. The design of the whole plate, the lighting of the sky and of the side of the majestic cathedral, the proportion of the towers and high-pitched roof of Notre-Dame to the massive but comparatively insignificant buildings along the line of the Seine combine to produce a total effect of unrivalled dignity and charm. How eloquent, too, is the contrast of all that splendid architecture across the river with the squalid foreground, where heaps of sand are being shovelled into carts, and barges of the humblest kind are moored along the shore. L'Abside, again, has a little etched poem "O toi dégustateur de tout morceau gothique," to accompany it, but this is one of the very rarest of Meryon's etchings and is not in the British Museum, though the verses are written in pencil by Meryon's hand on the margin of one of the states of L'Abside in that collection. Then, with the Tombeau de Molière (plate 23) the series closes. Not only in the intensity of this realisation of his subject and in the perfect skill of the actual etching was Meryon a great innovator, but also in the importance that he attached to the utmost care in printing. In collaboration with Auguste Delâtre, the best printer of etchings of his day, Meryon produced exquisite proofs of the early states of the "Eaux-fortes sur Paris" printed in carefully composed brown and black inks on the choicest papers, green, brown, yellowish, white, of old Dutch manufacture or imported from Japan. This was a complete innovation in 1850, and he set an example which the most scrupulous etchers and printers have endeavoured to follow to this day but have never surpassed. Like most French etchers, Meryon preferred proofs from clean wiped plates to those printed with any considerable amount of tone. A letter from Meryon himself on this subject, written in 1863, is quoted by Burty.

During the production of all these masterpieces Meryon was