THE APPEAL OF THE ETCHINGS


The citizen and golfer, whose commerce with Rembrandt was narrated in the
first chapter, approached the master through the writings of his
Recoverers, certain art historians and scholars, who frequent libraries,
search archives, and peruse documents; men to whom a picture is a
scientific document rather than an emotional or intellectual experience. He
was well content to end his commerce with Rembrandt there. History
interested him: to art he was apathetic.

His son, as was indicated in the second chapter, was indifferent to art
history, and he would not have walked across the road to read an unedited
document; but I see him tramping ten miles to seek a picture that promised
to stir his emotions and stimulate his imagination. Rembrandt, the maker of
pictures, had become a vivid personality, a master whom he reverenced; but
Rembrandt the etcher was unknown to him.

There are authorities who assert that in etching Rembrandt's art found its
amplest and most exquisite expression. None will deny that his is the
greatest name in etching. If all Rembrandt's pictures were destroyed, if
every record of them by photograph or copy was blotted out, the etchings
alone would form so ample a testimony to his genius that the name of
Rembrandt would still remain among the foremost artists of the world.

Rembrandt enjoyed a period of popularity with his pictures, followed by
years of decline and neglect, when lesser and more accommodating men ousted
him from popular favour. But from first to last the products of his needle
were appreciated by his contemporaries, even if he himself did not set
great store by them. He began to etch early in life: he ceased only when