Title: The Etchings of Charles Meryon
Author: Dodgson, Campbell
Language: English
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                    THE ETCHINGS OF CHARLES MERYON



                            THE ETCHINGS OF
                            CHARLES MERYON

                   BY CAMPBELL DODGSON, M.A., C.B.E.
                   KEEPER OF THE PRINTS AND DRAWINGS
                         AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM


                       EDITED BY GEOFFREY HOLME
                PUBLISHED BY “THE STUDIO,” LTD., LONDON
                                MCMXXI


    _Printed by Herbert Reiach, Ltd.,
    9 King Street, Covent Garden,
    London. Photogravure plates
    engraved and printed by A.
    Alexander & Sons, Ltd., 15
    Westmoreland Place, City Road,
    London._



CONTENTS


ARTICLES                                                            Page

Introduction                                                           1

Early Life                                                             3

The Early Etchings                                                     6

The Etchings of Paris                                                  8

Other Etchings of the ’Fifties                                        20

The Late Etchings                                                     22

List of Meryon’s Etchings                                             24


LIST OF ETCHINGS REPRODUCED.[1]                                    Plate

Charles Meryon. By Félix Bracquemond 9 × 5-7/8 in.                     1

Titre des Eaux-fortes sur Paris (D.17), 6-1/2 × 4-15/16 in.            2

Dédicace à Reynier Nooms, dit Zeeman (D.18), 6-15/16 × 2-3/4 in.       3

Ancienne Porte du Palais de Justice (D.19), third state
3-7/16 × 3-3/8 in.                                                     4

Armes Symboliques de la Ville de Paris (D.21), third
state, 5-3/8 × 4-3/8 in.                                               5

Le Stryge (D.23), eighth state, 6-3/4 × 5-1/8 in.                      6

Le Petit Pont (D.24), fifth state, 10-1/4 × 7-1/2 in.                  7

L’Arche du Pont Notre-Dame (D.25), third state 6 × 7-3/4 in.           8

La Galerie Notre-Dame (D.26), third state, 11-1/8 × 6-15/16 in.        9

La Rue des Mauvais Garçons (D.27), third state, 5 × 3-7/8 in.         10

La Tour de L’Horloge (D.28), third state, 10-5/16 × 7-1/4 in.         11

Tourelle de la Rue de la Tixéranderie (D.29), second
state, 9-3/4 × 5-3/16 in.                                             12

Saint-Etienne-du-Mont (D.30), fifth state 9-3/4 × 5-1/8 in.           13

La Pompe Notre-Dame (D.31), ninth state, 6-3/4 × 9-7/8 in.            14

La Petite Pompe (D.32), second state, 4-1/4 × 3-1/8 in.               15

Le Pont-Neuf (D.33), eighth state, 7-3/16 × 7-1/4 in.                 16

Le Pont-au-Change (D.34), second state, 6-1/8 × 13-1/16 in.           17

Le Pont-au-Change (D.34), ninth state, 6-1/8 × 13-1/16 in.            18

L’Espérance (D.35), (Vers destinés à accompagner Le
Pont-au-Change), 2-1/2 × 5 in.                                        19

La Morgue (D.36), third state, 9-1/8 × 8-1/8 in.                      20

L’Hôtellerie de la Mort (D.37), two plates each 4-3/4 × 1-3/8 in.     21

L’Abside de Notre-Dame de Paris (D.38), fourth state,
6-1/2 × 11-3/4 in.                                                    22

Tombeau de Molière (D.40), second state, 2-5/8 × 2-3/4 in.            23

Charles Meryon, 1858. By Léopold Flameng, 8-3/4 × 10-3/4 in.          24

Tourelle de la Rue de L’Ecole.-de-Médecine (D.41),
sixth state, 8-3/8 × 5-3/16 in.                                       25

Tourelle de la Rue de L’Ecole.-de-Médecine (D.41),
ninth state, 8-3/8 × 5-3/16 in.                                       26

Rue des Chantres (D.42), first state, 11-3/4 × 5-7/8 in.              27

Rue des Chantres (D.42), fourth state, 11-3/4 × 5-7/8 in.             28

Collège Henri IV. (D. 43), sixth state, 11-5/8 × 18-7/8 in.           29

Bain-froid Chevrier (D.44), fourth state, 5-1/8 × 5-5/8 in.           30

Le Ministère de la Marine (D.45), first state, 6-5/8 × 5-3/4 in.      31

Le Ministère de la Marine (D.45), fifth state, 6-5/8 × 5-3/4 in.      32

Le Pont-Neuf et la Samaritaine (D.46), third state, 5-11/16 × 8 in.   33

Le Pont-au-Change vers 1784, d’après Nicolle (D. 47),
third state, 5-5/16 × 9-3/8 in.                                       34

La Salle des Pas-perdus à l’ancien Palais-de-Justice
(D.48), fourth state, 10-5/8 × 17-1/8 in.                             35

Rue Pirouette aux Halles (D.49), third state, 6-1/8 × 4-9/16 in.      36

Partie de la Cité vers la Fin du XVIIᵉ Siècle (D.51),
seventh state, 6 × 12-5/8 in.                                         37

L’Ancien Louvre, d’après une peinture de Zeeman
(D.53), fifth state, 6-3/8 × 10-1/2 in.                               38

Porte d’un ancien Couvent à Bourges (D.54), second
state, 6-5/8 × 4-3/8 in.                                              39

Rue des Toiles à Bourges (D.55), fifth state, 8-1/2 × 4-3/4 in.       40

Ancienne Habitation à Bourges (D.56),
fourth state, 9-5/8 × 5-7/16 in.                                      41

Entrée du Couvent des Capucins à Athènes (D.61),
third state, 7-5/8 × 5 in.                                            42

Nouvelle-Calédonie. Grande case indigène sur le
Chemin de Ballade à Poepo (D.67), fourth state,
5-5/8 × 9-3/4 in.                                                     43

Océanie, Pêche aux Palmes (D.68), fourth state, 6-1/4 × 13-1/4 in.    44

La Chaumière du Colon (D.72), third state, 3-1/8 × 3 in.              45

Prô-volant des Iles Mulgrave (D.74), fifth state, 5-3/4 × 3-1/8 in.   46

L. J.-Marie Bizeul (D.83), fourth state, 6-1/2 × 4-5/8 in.            47



PREFACE


No modern author could write on Meryon without acknowledging in the
amplest terms, as I do, his indebtedness to M. Loys Delteil’s monograph
on this great etcher in his _Peintre-Graveur Illustré_ (1907). The
biography which precedes it, and the quotations which it gives from
Baudelaire and Burty, and from Meryon’s own comments on what Burty wrote
about Meryon, make M. Delteil’s volume much more than a catalogue. The
other books that I have chiefly consulted are Burty’s Catalogue of
Meryon, translated by M. B. Huish (1879), and Aglaüs Bouvenne’s “Notes
et Souvenirs sur Charles Meryon” (1883.) I have had no access to
original documents, except the chief documents of all, the etchings
themselves, or to books not generally known; but there may be readers,
perhaps, who will welcome a brief account in English of Meryon’s career,
an estimate of his rank as an etcher, and comments on all of his
etchings that they have any need to know and admire. The originals of
all the etchings reproduced in the plates, except the portrait by
Bracquemond, are in the British Museum.

                                                                  C. D.

5 September, 1921.


ERRATUM.--_Page 23, line 18 from top, for “February 4th” read “February
14th.”_



                    THE ETCHINGS OF CHARLES MERYON



INTRODUCTION.


A century has passed since the birth of Meryon, a circumstance which
excuses, if it does not actually demand, a survey in retrospect of the
great etcher’s work and the growth of his renown. There is no
indication, it must be said at once, that the lapse of time has weakened
in any degree the sure fabric of his fame. About no other modern etcher,
save Whistler, is there an equal consensus of opinion among those whose
opinion counts, that he ranks among the great masters of his art.
Whistler himself was a dissentient; he spoke one day to Mr. Wedmore of
“Meryon, whom you have taken out of his comfortable place.” Without
insinuating that he was jealous of a _confrère_ with whom he was forced
to share the honour of a Wedmore catalogue, it may be remarked that the
utterances of such a lover of paradox as Whistler need not be taken too
seriously. Nor is an artist always the best judge of a fellow artist who
pursues very different aims from his own. Meryon’s reputation, though it
is ungrudgingly admitted and admired by most etchers of to-day and
yesterday, was established by the critics and collectors of a generation
now extinct. Philippe Burty, who published the first critical article on
Meryon and the first catalogue of his etchings in the _Gazette des
Beaux-Arts_ of 1863, was the first to discern clearly and to proclaim to
the world his peculiar genius. Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier
added their words of praise and the _Galerie Notre-Dame_ evoked the
enthusiasm of Victor Hugo. Bracquemond, by twelve years his junior in
age but his contemporary in the practice and mastery of etching, gave
him all the support of his appreciation, and there was a small
enlightened circle of collectors, including Wasset of the War Office,
Niel of the Ministry of the Interior, Meryon’s former shipmate De
Salicis, the English etcher Seymour Haden, and a few others who saw the
great merit of his work from the first. But on the whole his reception
in France was cool and discouraging; academic opinion at the time was
unfavourable to original etching. The editor of the _Gazette des
Beaux-Arts_ grudged admission to Burty’s essay and asked, if two
articles were to be devoted to a modern etcher, how many would be needed
for Raphael. His _Galerie Notre-Dame_ was refused by the Salon in 1853,
and though many of his Paris etchings were exhibited there, they gained
no prize. The public collections did not acquire his works and it was
not till 1866 that Burty induced the Chalcographie Impériale at the
Louvre to commission and publish one of his plates, _L’Ancien Louvre_,
after Zeeman (plate 38). The stories told of the pitiful sums that he
used to accept for proofs of his finest etchings, a franc and a half or
two francs, sometimes, seem almost incredible now, when such proofs sell
for hundreds of pounds. In a pathetic letter which he addressed in 1854
to the Minister of the Interior, appealing to him for the support which
he could not obtain from the public, he announced his intention of
producing a set of ten etchings of Bourges, and charging fifteen francs
for the set. He actually sold the whole series of his masterpieces,
“Eaux-fortes sur Paris,” as a set, for twenty-five or thirty francs.
They sold very slowly indeed. A receipt is extant from him for
twenty-five francs paid by Baron Pichon in 1866, twelve years after the
publication of the set, for “une suite de vues anciennes de Paris,
gravées par moi à l’eau-forte, intitulées Eaux-fortes sur Paris.”

It was not till 1910 that the first collective exhibition of Meryon’s
etched work was held in Paris, at the Galerie Devambez. In England,
where his fame was spread by Seymour Haden, Philip Gilbert Hamerton and
Wedmore, Meryon’s reputation grew more rapidly, at least after his
death. The great French private collections of his etchings crossed the
Channel, Burty’s being sold in 1876, and the year 1879, eleven years
after Meryon’s death, witnessed the publication of two different English
catalogues of his etchings and the holding of a fine exhibition of his
etchings and drawings at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, to which the
Rev. J. J. Heywood was the largest contributor. Much later, in 1902, an
important exhibition was held by Messrs. Obach & Co., while Messrs. P.
and D. Colnaghi & Co., arranged another very fine Meryon exhibition in
1919. The British Museum, fortunately, owes to the foresight of a former
Keeper of Prints the early formation of a magnificent, though not
complete, collection of Meryon, to which additions are still
occasionally made, though they must needs be few now that a further
stage in the migration of fine proofs is in progress and not the Channel
only, but the Atlantic, parts them from their _pays d’origine_. The
National Gallery of Scotland is fortunate in having obtained, by the
gift of Mrs. G. R. Halkett, a small selection of very fine proofs of
Meryon etchings, but Edinburgh’s gain is far less than was Glasgow’s
loss by the sale, in 1916, of the collection of Mr. B. B. Macgeorge,
which was undoubtedly the most complete work of Meryon ever brought
together, containing, as it did, not merely almost every etching by the
master in almost every state, but also a large number of his original
drawings for the etchings of Paris. The year 1916 was an unfavourable
time for acquiring such a valuable _œuvre_ for any national or municipal
museum, and the Macgeorge collection went to America and was dispersed,
only a small number of proofs remaining in, or returning to, this
country, where, I suppose, no one collection of importance still remains
except that of the British Museum. A Meryon exhibition is being held at
the Museum this autumn to celebrate the centenary of the artist’s birth.



EARLY LIFE


The story of Meryon’s life has often been told, but those who do not
know it may welcome a brief recapitulation of it here, and indeed some
such narrative is needed for the comprehension of his work, which
becomes much more interesting when something is known of the period and
circumstances in which it was produced. Meryon was born in Paris on
November 23rd, 1821, as the natural son of Dr. Charles Lewis Meryon, an
English doctor, formerly physician and secretary to Lady Hester
Stanhope, and an opera dancer, Pierre-Narcisse Chaspoux, aged
twenty-eight, known as Mme. Gentil, who already had a daughter by an
English peer. It was not till August 9th, 1824, that Dr. Meryon made a
formal recognition of paternity and left a sum of money, on leaving
France, for his son’s education. His mother brought him up with tender
care, but he inherited from her apparently the mental disease with which
he was afterwards afflicted; she died, out of her mind, in 1837 or 1838.
At the age of five, under the name of Charles Gentil, he went to school
at Passy, where he received some elementary lessons in drawing. A very
childish drawing of houses, trees and a well, in red and black chalk, of
which at a later period some one made a woodcut, is in the British
Museum; by internal evidence one may judge it to be earlier than the
elementary lessons. He went to Marseilles, Hyères, and to Italy, as far
as Pisa and Leghorn; then returned to Paris till he made up his mind to
go into the Navy, and, in 1837, entered the naval school at Brest. It
was then that he adopted his father’s name of Meryon. Leaving the naval
school in 1839, he sailed from Toulon in October in the _Alger_ for the
Levant, and was transferred at Smyrna, as a first-class cadet, to the
_Montebello_. He visited Argos, the tomb of Agamemnon and the lion gate
at Mycenae, and at Athens made drawings of the frieze of the Temple of
Theseus and of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates which appears in his
etching of the _Convent of the French Capuchins at Athens_, 1854 (plate
42). On his return to Toulon he had further lessons in drawing. In 1842
he went to sea again, being gazetted as “enseigne de vaisseau” to the
corvette _Le Rhin_, which cruised about New Zealand, New Caledonia, and
the islands of the Pacific. The fruits of these years of travel in
Oceania may be seen in a number of etchings which he made in later life
(Delteil 63-74). A multitude of pencil sketches made on his travels
remained in his family’s possession till 1904, when they were given to
the British Museum by Mr. Lewis Meryon. They include drawings of his
shipmates, of native houses, fetishes and boats, palm trees and other
vegetation, studies of skies and sunsets, with notes of colour, sketches
of the flight of the albatross, drawings of fish and other fauna of the
Pacific, and last, but not least, the original drawings for _Le malingre
Cryptogame_ (D. 66) and _Tête de chien de la Nouvelle-Hollande_ (D. 65),
the ship’s pet whose queer habits and tragic death by falling overboard
before Meryon’s eyes are graphically described in one of his letters
quoted at length in Burty’s memoir. Long afterwards, in conversations
with Burty, Meryon used to say how his thoughts dwelt on the rocky coast
of New Caledonia, where “he had met a race of savages, handsome, heroic,
intelligent, where he had breathed an air overladen with balm, where, if
he could, he should like one day to return to finish life free and
happy.” On the return of _Le Rhin_ in 1846 Meryon received six months’
leave and returned to Paris. He had scruples about his constitution
being strong enough for the profession of a sailor; he neglected to ask
for an extension of his leave, and in the end his resignation was
accepted and he left the Service on September 17th, 1846. He was then in
possession of a sum of 20,000 francs left to him by his mother. He took
a studio and had lessons from a painter named Philippe. He has recorded
his enthusiasm at this time for the pictures of Delacroix, Decamps and
Hogarth, whose work he had seen during a short visit to England. After
some experiments in allegory, inspired by the proclamation of the
republic at the February revolution, he abandoned painting for
engraving, and entered the studio of the etcher, Eugène Bléry, in 1848.
A circumstance which affected this decision was the discovery that his
eyesight suffered from the defect known as Daltonism, a partial
colour-blindness.



THE EARLY ETCHINGS


Bléry as an etcher has little interest for us, but he was sufficiently
skilled to impart in six months a sound technique to a pupil, whose
interest in the art was fostered by the study of old etchings and
especially those of the Dutch etcher of architecture and marine
subjects, Renier Zeeman (1623-1663), which he used to pick up for a few
sous in the boxes outside the printsellers’ shops. Meryon’s first
etching of all was a head of Christ, founded on a miniature after
Philippe de Champaigne; the only impression known of this etching is in
the Howard Mansfield collection at New York. During the years 1849-50 he
produced a number of copies after Loutherbourg, Salvator Rosa, Karel du
Jardin and others, but Zeeman fascinated him above all in the double
capacity of an etcher of marines and of views of old Paris, and it was
from his style that he learnt most. While still with Bléry his mind is
said to have been slightly unhinged by an unfortunate love affair with
the daughter of a restaurant keeper, who would have nothing to say to
him. In solitary wanderings about the old streets of Paris and
meditations in his garret in the Rue St. Etienne-du-Mont, he formed
plans for his series of etchings of old Paris and began to make studies
for them. As early as 1850 one of these masterly plates, _Le Petit Pont_
(plate 7), was finished.

In making his studies of old houses and churches, Meryon seldom made a
complete drawing on the spot. He would go every day at the same hour and
make minutely finished studies of details on small bits of paper, which
he either stuck together or made another drawing from them. He used an
exceedingly sharp, hard pencil; the astonishing fineness of the line
that he produced with it may be well seen in two early drawings of Rouen
Cathedral from the Seine in the British Museum, which also possesses
some of the drawings of architecture at Bourges, a place which first
fascinated him on a visit made about 1848. In drawing architecture
Meryon always worked upwards from the bottom of his object, saying that
buildings were begun from the foundation and the artist should follow
the same method as the builder. In the same way he would draw men from
the feet upwards, saying that they must always be planted firmly on
their feet before they began to do anything. _Le Petit Pont_ well
illustrates another peculiarity of his practice in drawing architecture.
He deliberately renounced any competition with the camera of the
photographer, and claimed the right to arrange the different parts of
what he drew in the manner best calculated to convey a certain
impression, while preserving the utmost exactness in the representation
of detail in each part. It has been observed, by those who know the spot
well, that the towers of Notre-Dame, which dominate the whole
composition, are much too high in the etching in regard to their actual
dimensions and to the laws of perspective. After taking a drawing from
very low down, near the edge of the water, Meryon drew the towers again
from the level of the street, as the passer-by would habitually see
them, and fitted this drawing with great skill into the former one,
constructing by this combination a composition which produced the
desired effect of impressive and majestic height, all the details being
absolutely accurate, though on reflection it might be discovered that
they could not all be seen at once.

_Le Petit Pont_ is the first of his mature works, and marks an
astonishing advance upon the exercises in copying other etchers which,
with the exception of a few important portraits, are all that had
preceded it. “Unimportant,” his own portrait, seated before an easel,
could never have been, at least as a document, though it may have been
immature, but we cannot judge of its quality, for Meryon destroyed it
and preserved no proofs, and we only know of its existence from his own
statement recorded by Burty. The only proof of his portrait of Eugène
Bléry was destroyed by Bléry’s wife because she did not like it. Thus
the only portrait of his quite early time which is actually extant is
that of Edmond de Courtives, and of this only one impression, formerly
in the Macgeorge collection, can actually be traced. It is a little
medallion containing the head, reduced from an etching which according
to Meryon’s own account was originally a half length, in which a violin
and some chemical apparatus were introduced beside the sitter. It was an
original etching, based on a drawing from life by Meryon himself.

All the other portraits are of much later date, one belonging to the
year 1856, the rest to 1861 or 1862 (plate 47). None of them are
original etchings; they are founded on drawings by others, old prints or
photographs, in one case on a medallion by David d’Angers; they are
quite insignificant and we shall have no need to mention them again. The
other etchings of 1849-50 would have no interest for us if anyone else
but Meryon had etched them. It is only the four oblong subjects of Paris
and its vicinity after Zeeman that count for something more, because
they show very plainly on what Meryon formed his taste, and anticipate,
in the proportions and _ordonnance_ of the plate and in the treatment of
river boats and of the little figures on the banks of the Seine that we
see in _Le Pavillon de Mademoiselle_ and in _La Rivière de Seine et
l’angle du Mail_, habits that we shall soon come to regard, when we
consider the original etchings of Paris, as specially characteristic of
Meryon himself.



THE ETCHINGS OF PARIS



But when we come to _Le Petit Pont_ (plate 7), etched in the same year
as these copies after Zeeman, and exhibited in the Salon of 1850, we are
aware of quite a different vision, a different order of intellect, as
well as greater perfection of technical skill. It is becoming difficult
for us after the lapse of seventy years, in which so many other etchers
have been working on Meryon’s lines, to realise how new, how
epoch-making in the strict sense of the word, was such an etching as _Le
Petit Pont_ in 1850. There had been fine engravers and etchers of
architecture before Meryon; there had been Hollar, there had been
Canale, Piranesi and Rossini. But they in their different degrees were
facile and fluent, rhetorical, diffuse, commercial, in comparison with
the severe, tense, concentrated style of Meryon. In his “Eaux-Fortes sur
Paris,” which extend in date from 1850 to 1854, he achieved a body of
work which led the way in what is called the modern revival of etching
and in its own special style has never been surpassed, though other
etchers have triumphed in other styles of etching which were entirely
outside Meryon’s limited compass. Not only was he in advance of all the
other notable etchers of his generation, but he had finished this series
of masterpieces before the others had begun to produce anything of
importance. Millet began to etch in 1855; Whistler’s Paris set dates
from 1858; Haden, though he had etched in the forties, did little that
really counts till about 1858. Jacque and Daubigny were working before
Meryon, but they are hardly in the same class. It was consonant with
Meryon’s brooding, introspective temperament that he took the work of
etching very seriously. He acquired a profound knowledge of the
technique of the art and applied it, in the case of all his important
etchings, with conscientious thoroughness. Disdaining anything like a
sketchy treatment of his subject, he built up the whole design
laboriously, painfully, with tireless perseverance, after making the
most conscientious studies of detail. He was, in fact, by habit and
temperament more an engraver than an etcher, though he used the etching
process instead of attacking the copper with a burin.

But nothing that I have yet said explains what there is in Meryon that
makes us regard him as a great artist. Any etcher might have taken all
these pains and yet remained to the end nothing but an industrious
plodder. It was the combination, in Meryon, of this high degree of
mechanical skill with a fine instinct for design and the poet’s vision
which was still more specially his prerogative, that places him in a
different category from a Lalanne, a Martial-Potémont or an Edwin
Edwards. The old streets of Paris were not, for him, merely storehouses
of picturesque motives, structures composed of walls and porticoes,
gables and spires, on which the sun arranged at different times of day
different patterns of light and shade; they were that, certainly, and
his etcher’s eye, trained to observe niceties of gradation between black
and white rather than varieties of actual colour, took full advantage of
their hitherto unexplored wealth of suggestion. Leaving all metaphor out
of court, his actual eyesight was astonishingly keen; he saw details of
architecture with the naked eye which would be revealed to average
persons only by a telescope. But to him the streets of Paris were
haunted places, peopled with ghosts and wet with tears. Their atmosphere
was infected by old crimes and miseries and sins. The lonely meditations
of a brain already morbid, affected even when he was a boy by the
discovery that he was a bastard, suspicious in later life and shrinking
from human intercourse, were reflected in the melancholy which seems, to
sympathetic observers, to brood over the dark narrow streets, survivors
of a mediæval Paris, much of which was doomed to destruction in the
great demolitions and reconstructions of the Second Empire. But Meryon
did not trust entirely to sympathetic observation to discern his
meaning. He expressed himself directly in verses, which were meant to be
published, and in some cases actually were published, along with the
architectural etchings, to explain what reflections the subjects aroused
in the etcher’s mind. Sometimes these verses were etched at the foot of
the subject itself, as in the fourth state of _Le Stryge_; more often
they were etched on separate plates, in cursive writing, with little
ornaments and rather elaborate capitals, the stanzas carefully spaced in
a decorative arrangement. They may be seen reproduced, so far as they
were actually etched, in M. Loys Delteil’s catalogue, but the whole of
Meryon’s verses, including some that he did not etch, are collected and
presented in a more legible form, being printed with type, in Aglaüs
Bouvenne’s “Notes et Souvenirs sur Charles Meryon.” They are jerky,
queer and amateurish verses, but they throw so much light on Meryon’s
mentality that they must not be neglected by any student of his art.

It is time that we returned to the Paris etchings themselves, of which
only one, _Le Petit Pont_ (plate 7), has hitherto been mentioned in our
survey of the progress of Meryon’s work. The complete series as he
published them himself, in three parts, between 1852 and 1854, consists
of twenty-two etchings,[2] preceded by a portrait of Meryon etched by
Bracquemond; not the half-length portrait, seated, with the hand resting
on the back of a chair (plate 1),[3] which was etched in 1853 (Beraldi
77), but the head in profile to the left (Beraldi 78), in imitation of
an antique sculpture in relief, with the legend, composed and etched by
Meryon himself, in 1854:

    Messire Bracquemond
    A peint en cette image
    Le sombre Meryon
    Au grotesque visage.

Of the “cahiers” which were issued of the Paris set, containing this
portrait, probably not one remains to-day intact. The twenty-two
etchings by Meryon himself consisted of an etched title (plate 2)
printed on grey, brown, blue or green paper (in which, it should be
noticed, as well as in the address etched at the foot of each plate, the
etcher calls himself Meryon, not Méryon), four small preliminary
etchings, twelve important subjects, which bear numbers in the final
state, which was not printed till 1861 and then in an edition of thirty
only, and five more plates which were never numbered, and which, as
regards size at least, must be counted as “minor” works, though they
include _La Rue des Mauvais Garçons_ (plate 10), a plate to which
posterity attaches a high value, if Meryon did not do so himself. Some
of the minor etchings are so extremely rare that they must have been
printed in small numbers and not generally included in the “cahier.”
Several rather important etchings of Paris were done at a later date,
and did not form part of the “Eaux-Fortes sur Paris” set.

The dedication to Zeeman, “peintre des matelots” (plate 3), is in verses
which express in simple language Meryon’s love and admiration for the
master who had inspired his early efforts, concluding with the words:--

    Mon maître et matelot,
    Renier toi que j’aime
    Comme un autre moi-même
    A revoir, à bientôt.

The frontispiece (plate 4), a round composition in which a devil
carrying a great scroll hovers against a lurid sky over the Gothic
gateway of the Palais de Justice, is a sinister design. The Tomb of
Molière (plate 23), tail-piece to the set, was etched on the same plate,
and a proof exists from the undivided copper containing both designs.
The verses following the frontispiece are a comment on the latter, and
express Meryon’s conviction that the city of Paris, “Paris le Paradis
des amours et des Ris,” is possessed by a “noir Diabloton, malicieux,
mutin,” fostered by science, and that this “méchant animal, Origine du
mal” cannot be exorcised without razing the city to the ground. These
etched verses are very rare. The symbolical coat of arms of the city of
Paris (plate 5) is another of the minor pieces inserted in 1854, when
the set was being completed. Then follows _Le Stryge_ (plate 6), etched
in 1853, one of the most original and impressive of all Meryon’s
etchings. His elbows propped on the ledge of the balcony, one of the
Gothic monsters of the western towers of Notre-Dame broods with head in
hands and lolling tongue, an enigmatical and evil expression in his eye,
over the city of Paris seen far below, with the Tour St. Jacques as the
most prominent object. Jackdaws circle in the air about the towers, and
graven beneath the oval, in one state only of the plate, is the sinister
couplet:--

    Insatiable vampire, l’éternelle luxure
    Sur la grande cité convoite sa pâture.

The delicacy of the work, in fine proofs, is beyond the power of any
mechanical process to reproduce. Two pencil studies, formerly in the
Macgeorge collection, are very interesting as showing Meryon’s
conscientious method of preparation for this plate. He made one very
highly finished drawing of all that is seen of the city of Paris down
below, reserving blank spaces for the Stryge and for the Tour St.
Jacques--there is also a trial state of the plate, showing that all this
portion of the design was etched first, directly from this drawing--and
then another equally finished drawing of the tower and the stone monster
by themselves, with all the rest of the subject drawn in outline,
probably traced from the first drawing. A drawing by Meryon of another
of the monsters of Notre Dame, a monkey, with a set of verses written
beside it, is reproduced in Bouvenne’s “Notes et Souvenirs.” Then
follows _Le Petit Pont_ (plate 7), in which the twin towers of
Notre-Dame, beautifully placed on the plate, surmount the long rows of
houses on the Quai du Marché Neuf and dominate the whole composition.
The outline drawing which Meryon made from the level of the shore,
showing the towers very much lower, is reproduced in M. Delteil’s
catalogue. _L’Arche du Pont Notre-Dame_ (plate 8), especially in the
beautiful proofs on green paper, is one of the most charming of the
whole series and free from any eccentricity. _La Galerie Notre-Dame_
(plate 9) is a very beautiful rendering of Gothic architecture, and a
most delicate study of effects of light, direct and reflected. The
impressions vary much, some being rich in tone and rather veiled, others
clean wiped and of a silvery clearness. The highly finished drawing
which Meryon etched almost in facsimile, only adding clouds in the sky,
was in the Macgeorge collection.

_La Rue des Mauvais Garçons_ (plate 10), which formed the _cul-de-lampe_
or tail-piece of the first _livraison_ of “Eaux-Fortes sur Paris,” has
always impressed modern observers as one of the most powerful and
impressive of the etchings, fraught with mystery, enigmatic, suggestive
of long past tragedies. “Quel mortel habitait,” are the verses etched on
the building, “En ce gîte si sombre? Qui donc là se cachait Dans la nuit
et dans l’ombre?” Was it Virtue, in silent poverty; was it Crime? No
answer to the riddle is attempted. The street exists no longer.

_La Tour de l’Horloge_ (plate 11) was drawn and etched in 1852 while
alterations were in progress which materially altered the appearance of
Le Châtelet. This plate has always struck me as being a very
straightforward and masterly portrait of a building, but without so much
personal expression as Meryon generally contrived to impart to his other
etchings. An edition of 600 copies of Delteil’s sixth state was
published in _L’Artiste_ in 1858, and it was only after this large
edition had been struck off that Meryon made a rather important change
in the plate, which appears in the last two states, by making rays of
light issue, somewhat unaccountably, from the windows between the high
square tower and the first of the round ones. _Tourelle de la rue de la
Tixéranderie_ (plate 12), also etched in 1852, was drawn just before its
demolition. The etching gives a very beautiful effect of sunlight on a
most picturesque old house, with the lower part of its turret wreathed
in the foliage of a creeper; but the mediæval knight in helm and plumes,
who rides along the street, and the nude woman standing in the doorway
(in the first state) are curious additions to the scene. The latter
figure was retouched in the final state. _Saint-Etienne-du-Mont_ (plate
13), also etched in 1852, is similar in style, as in dimensions, to the
last subject. It gives, again, a beautiful effect of sunlight, and the
architectural details of the church are shown with an exquisite
clearness. The little figures are lively and interesting, but in the
state here reproduced a blemish may be noticed; the raised arms of a
workman on the scaffolding, near the gas lamp on the right, have been
effaced, to be restored in the next state.

_La Pompe Notre-Dame_ (plate 14), another plate belonging to the
prolific year 1852, is one of the most picturesque etchings of the
series. The proportions of the various masses of architecture to the
oblong plate are perfectly satisfying, and the eye delights in the
intricate lines, alternately light and dark, of the two wooden
structures that rise out of the water like the piles of a “lake
dwelling.” Meryon excuses himself, in an interesting letter, for making
the towers of Notre-Dame higher than they should be, as actually seen
from this point of view: “Les Tours saillent aussi un peu plus que dans
la réalité; mais je considère que ce sont licenses permises, puisque
c’est pour ainsi dire dans ce sens que travaille l’esprit, sitôt que
l’objet qui l’a frappé a disparu de devant les yeux” (quoted by M. Loys
Delteil from a letter to Paul Mantz). This plate was published in an
edition of 600 by _L’Artiste_ in 1858; before that time the building
itself had been demolished. Meryon alludes to the impending demolition
in the rather insignificant little design, with some doggerel verses
etched within it, known as _La Petite Pompe_ (plate 15), of 1854.

_Le Pont-Neuf_ (plate 16), an etching of 1853, is the ninth of the set
as Meryon numbered it. It is a solid, masterly piece of architectural
etching about which there is not much to be said. The light falling on
the truncated turrets of the bridge and reflected on the surface of the
river is very subtly observed. In the sixth state, and in that only,
eight verses are etched, beginning

    Ci-gît du vieux Pont Neuf
    Tout radoubé de neuf
    L’exacte ressemblance
    Par récente ordonnance.

This is poor stuff, and Meryon was well advised to suppress it in later
states.

_Le Pont-au-Change_ (plates 17, 18), etched in 1854, shows again Le
Châtelet and the Tour de l’Horloge, and, beyond the bridge, the tower,
with which we are now familiar, of La Pompe Notre-Dame. This etching is
remarkable for the many changes introduced into the sky in successive
states. From the second to the sixth state of Delteil there is a balloon
floating in the sky towards the left, inscribed SPERANZA (plate 17), to
which the verses _L’Espérance_ (plate 19) allude. In the seventh state
this balloon disappears; in its stead there are great flights of birds
across the sky, of which the lower resemble wild duck, while the upper
ones, with longer wings, have got hooked beaks which make them look more
like birds of prey than the jackdaws which one would expect to fly round
the towers of a city. These remain (plate 18) during several alterations
in the plate, until the tenth state, when they have disappeared from the
left, though a concentrated flock wheels about the Tour de l’Horloge,
and their place is taken by new balloons, near and distant, and in the
eleventh state by still more balloons, one of which bears the name of
Vasco de Gama. This is all rather crazy, and the alterations were made,
like those on other plates to which we shall refer later, after Meryon’s
mind had finally become deranged. This is evidently the etching referred
to in a letter from Baudelaire to Poulet Malassis (quoted by M. Loys
Delteil): “Dans une de ses grandes planches, il a substituté à un petit
ballon une nuée d’oiseaux de proie, et, comme je lui faisais remarquer
qu’il était invraisemblable de mettre tant d’aigles dans un ciel
parisien, il m’a répondu que cela n’était pas dénué de fondement,
puisque ces gens-là (le gouvernement de l’Empereur) avaient souvent
lâché des aigles pour étudier les présages, suivant le rite,--et que
cela avait été imprimé dans les journaux, même dans le _Moniteur_. Je
dois dire qu’il ne se cache en aucune façon de son respect pour toutes
les superstitions, mais il les explique mal, et il voit de la cabale
partout.” This letter dates from January 1860, a few months after Meryon
had been released from his first confinement in an asylum, and it must
be observed that any eccentricities due to mental derangement can only
be traced in plates etched subsequently to 1859, or in the _late
states_, produced by re-touching after that date, of the “Eaux-fortes
sur Paris” themselves, which, as first completed in 1854, the year of
this publication, had been perfectly normal.

Another of the etched poems, “_L’Espérance_,” accompanies _Le
Pont-au-Change_. After this, two more of the “Eaux-Fortes” remain to be
noticed, and they are by general agreement the finest of the whole set:
_La Morgue_ and _L’Abside de Notre-Dame de Paris_, both etched in 1854.
_La Morgue_ (plate 20) combines a masterly distribution of black and
white spaces and a perfectly successful treatment of the windows, roofs
and chimneys, which rise in a curious succession of different levels
from the riverside, with a motive of poignant human interest in the
dramatic group that bears, on the left, the body of a drowned man from
the Seine towards the “Doric little Morgue,” as Browning calls it, on
the right. The associations of the building, irresistibly suggested by
this incident, are explained in the pathetic little poem, “_L’Hôtellerie
de la Mort_” (plate 21), Meryon’s finest effort in verse, etched on two
separate plates and intended to accompany _La Morgue_, but so rare that
it very seldom does so. “The bed and the table that the City of Paris
offers gratis at any time to its poor children,” we can imagine what
they are--a marble slab, with water dripping down it, under that roof so
magnificently etched.

    “Puissiez-vous ne point voir
     Là sur le marbre noir
     De quelqu’âme chérie
     La navrante effigie!”

The poem was evidently completed originally in the first column, ending
with Meryon’s name, address and date, to which he added as an
afterthought a second column of verses full of consoling thoughts and
ending with words of faith and hope about the expansion of a flower “à
la fraiche corolle, à la sainte auréole,” a flower of love and
happiness, from the germ that is in man’s heart. In the impression at
the British Museum, words of bad omen, like “Mort,” “Misère,” “Plaisir,”
are printed in red, and the good words, “Dieu,” “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 living,
almost a recluse, in his rooms in the Rue St. Etienne-du-Mont. He had
great difficulty in selling proofs of his etchings, though he asked no
more than 30 francs for a Paris set. He took them in vain to various
publishers; there were then no dealers who sold etchings of this kind.
He had spent the money left to him by his mother; he gained no rewards
at the Salon; the Chalcographie Impériale du Louvre ignored him. He was
almost starving, says Burty, when he made the acquaintance of M. Jules
Niel, librarian at the Ministry of the Interior, a cultivated man who
recognised at once the significance of Meryon’s work. He obtained the
purchase of several sets of the etchings by the Minister and orders for
other work to be done by Meryon in the shape of reproductions of
historical drawings. In the winter of 1855-56 the Duke of Aremberg had
seen the Views of Paris at Montpellier. In 1857 he sent for Meryon to
Belgium, and commissioned him to etch views of his park at Enghien. But
Meryon was just then becoming a prey to mental disease, and he returned
to Paris, in great trouble of mind, in March 1858. He became more and
more unsociable, especially after he removed to a little hotel in the
Rue Fossé St. Jacques. Delâtre looked after him as best he could, but
Meryon refused to leave his bed, saying that he could not cross a sea of
blood, and threatened with a pistol those who approached him. Whilst he
was in this state Léopold Flameng drew, in May 1858, the well-known
portrait of Meryon in bed, sitting up, with a large black cravat round
his neck, the dark shadow of his head thrown upon the wall by the rays
of a lamp (plate 24). The features are sharp and emaciated with
self-imposed fasting. When the drawing was finished, Meryon asked to see
it. He sprang out of bed and tried to tear it up, but Flameng fled with
the portrait. On the following day, May 12th, Meryon was carried off to
the asylum at Charenton St. Maurice. The discipline and regular food,
instead of semi-starvation, had a good effect on him, and he was quiet,
gentle and polite. While he was in the asylum he made one etching, from
a drawing of the ruins of Pierrefonds brought to him by the architect,
Viollet le Duc. It was during this time that Delâtre had impressions of
some of his plates published by _L’Artiste_. On the 25th August, 1859,
Meryon was released on leave for three weeks, and did not actually go
back to the asylum until 1866.



OTHER ETCHINGS OF THE ’FIFTIES


The Paris set had almost entirely absorbed his energies during the years
of its production, but he made one or two other good etchings during the
same period. Two of the Bourges etchings belong to this time, the third
being much later. The only etching of 1851 was _Porte d’un ancien
Couvent, Bourges_ (plate 39), a lightly etched plate, parts of which
were only drawn in outline. Meryon printed very few copies of it, and
intended to complete it later, but it is a very beautiful piece of work
in its present condition. Meryon projected the publication of a Bourges
set, but it always remained in abeyance. Two draughts exist in his
handwriting, dated 1852, for the lettering of a title page to such a
set, and M. Delteil prints a letter addressed by him in 1854 to the
Ministry of the Interior, in which he sends a proof of the first plate
etched of the proposed Bourges set (meaning, no doubt, _Rue des Toiles,
Bourges_) and begs for a subscription for fifty copies of a set of ten
etchings at fifteen francs a set. The set was to consist of four
etchings of the same dimensions as the specimen submitted and six
etchings of details of buildings. The etchings were to represent private
houses, which were in more danger of demolition than public monuments.
He sent _Porte d’un ancien Couvent_ (plate 39) as a specimen of the less
important etchings that he projected. In the same letter he recalls that
the Ministry had subscribed for fifty copies of the Paris set, which had
been originally intended to consist of ten etchings (he counts only the
important subjects which ultimately received numbers); he had now
decided to add two more (_La Morgue_ and _L’Abside_) and begged the
Minister to subscribe for fifty copies of these additional plates at
two francs each, adding that such help as he would get from the Ministry
was almost his only assistance in view of the indifference of the
public. _Rue des Toiles à Bourges_ (plate 40) is a very fine etching,
comparable to some of the rather similar subjects in the Paris set,
notably _Tourelle, Rue de la Tixéranderie_. The early impressions of it
are very beautifully printed. The British Museum has recently acquired a
probably unique first state, earlier than any described by M. Delteil,
printed before the plate had been reduced to its ultimate dimensions.
The third Bourges etching, _Ancienne habitation à Bourges_ (plate 41)
was added much later, in 1860, and is in the style of some of the late
Paris etchings, but not so good. The only other etchings that date from
the period of the “Eaux-Fortes sur Paris” are the _Verses to Eugène
Bléry_ (two different plates with the same contents, D. 88, 89) and the
fine _Entrée du Couvent des Capucins à Athènes_ (plate 42), both etched
in 1854. Though Meryon had drawn in early youth the Choragic Monument of
Lysicrates which was then partly embedded in the buildings of the French
Capuchins at Athens, though it was afterwards detached from the wall,
his etching is copied from one of the plates by J. P. Le Bas in J. D. Le
Roy’s “Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce,” Paris, 1758.

It was about this time that Meryon began to etch plates of antiquarian
interest from old drawings or prints. Though they were commissioned for
illustrations, it is evident, among other things from a letter of
Baudelaire’s written in 1860, that Meryon himself developed a rather
tiresome habit of research, both pedantic and eccentric in its methods.
One of the best of these derivative etchings, the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_
(plate 35), after Ducerceau, dates from 1855, and _Le Pont-Neuf et la
Samaritaine_ (plate 33) and _Le Pont-au-Change vers 1784_ (plate 34)
were also etched in the same year. They are fine etchings, but do not
arouse the same interest as Meryon’s first-hand impressions of the Paris
of his own day. _Le Château de Chenonceau_, also after Ducerceau, and
etched in a very dry manner, is a plate of 1856, and in the same year
he etched, from photographs, the large panoramic view of _San
Francisco_. More typical Meryons are the two queer etchings of 1855 and
1856 called _La Loi Solaire_ and _La Loi Lunaire_, in which he
propounded very crazy views on morality, one of them being that an
upright posture is the proper attitude for sleep, a theory which he
himself carried into practice in later years, by passing the night
between two upright boards with his arms supported by loops of rope to
keep him from falling. _Le Pilote de Tonga_, a prose poem in a frame,
etched in 1856, is the first of what grew, in the sixties, into a long
series of etchings founded on his sketches and reminiscences of his
early voyage to the South Seas. These filled an even larger place in his
thoughts in his last years, but it is to be feared that the etchings of
these subjects, of which a few specimens are here reproduced (plates
43-46), leave posterity rather cold.



THE LATE ETCHINGS


The only etchings of any importance that Meryon produced after his
release from confinement are some of the last views of Paris, done at
the time when he was retouching his old plates of Paris and making the,
not very judicious, alterations which distinguish their latest states.
The new ones are: _Rue Pirouette_ (1860, plate 36), _Tourelle de la rue
de l’Ecole-de-Médecine_ (1861), which shows the house in which Marat was
assassinated (plates 25, 26), _Rue des Chantres_ (1862, plates 27, 28),
_Collège Henri IV_ (1864, plate 29), _Bain-froid Chevrier_ (1864, plate
30), _Le Ministère de la Marine_ (1866, plates 31, 32) and _L’ancien
Louvre, vers 1650_ (1866, plate 38), in which, fulfilling a commission
from the Chalcographie du Louvre, he returned to the study of his old
love, Renier Zeeman. The _Rue des Chantres_ is incomparably the finest
of these, but it can only be seen to real advantage in the very rare
early states, one of which the British Museum possesses (plate 27), in
which the spire, a recent addition to Notre-Dame designed by
Viollet-le-Duc, soars into an empty sky, which was afterwards
disfigured by the incongruous insertion of two bells and a device with
the initials J. B. (plate 28). The streets of all the etchings of the
sixties are filled with excited crowds or little groups of tall,
unnatural looking people, and all kinds of curious monsters and
allegorical figures hover in the sky or swoop in rapid flight across it.
The _Collège Henri IV_ (plate 29) in some of its states, has for
background a sea with sails and whales and sea-gods, and the figures in
the foreground are the most extraordinary that Meryon ever drew.

It is of no use to dwell at length on these symptoms of mental decline.
The lonely artist, subject to hallucinations, thinking that Jesuits were
watching him in every street, quarrelling with his best friends, who
found it impossible to help him, almost starving because he thought it
wrong to eat when others were in need, was no longer capable of the
concentrated effort that had produced the masterpieces of the first half
of the fifties. On October 12th, 1866, he was shut up again at
Charenton, where he died on February 4th, 1868, and where a friend of
his sailor days, De Salicis, pronounced an oration over his grave.
Bracquemond etched, with a few symbolical ornaments, a copper plate to
be laid on the slab of black Breton stone, resting on cubes on white
stone, which covered his tomb.

His life had been a failure; he was himself only too ready to proclaim
it. He regarded art as something so mysterious, so sacred, as to be
quite out of reach. “L’art pour lui n’existait qu’ à l’état de fétiche,
d’idéal,” wrote Dr. Gachet to Bouvenne, “on ne devait pas y toucher--il
n’y avait pas d’artistes.” To praise him as an artist was to make of him
an enemy. To such a temperament fame was denied while he lived. It
remained for posterity to do homage that could meet with no rebuff. The
sincerest flattery, that of imitation, has been offered to Meryon
without stint by a generation of etchers that was being born while he
was relaxing by degrees his imperfect grasp of life.



LIST OF MERYON’S ETCHINGS


Besides the earliest full catalogue of Meryon’s etchings, that by P.
Burty, translated into English by M. B. Huish (1879), which derives its
value from Burty’s Memoir of Meryon and his notes on certain of the
etchings, there are two catalogues of Meryon in general use, that
written by the late Sir F. Wedmore (“Méryon and Méryon’s Paris,” 2nd
ed., London, 1892) and the much more thorough catalogue by M. Loys
Delteil (1907) which forms Tome II. of the series, “Le Peintre-Graveur
illustré.” The British Museum collection is still arranged in Wedmore’s
order, which has one practical advantage: it gives precedence to the
important works, the etchings of Paris, and describes the other etchings
as minor works after these. Thus the visitor, not an expert, who asks
for Meryon’s etchings and receives the first volume, finds in it at once
a number of the masterpieces. He can persevere, if he will, and see the
minor works also; but, if he is more easily tired, he will at least have
seen the Paris set while his eye is fresh, and will have spent none of
his energy on the early experiments. On the other hand, Delteil is not
pedantically chronological; he also places the Paris etchings early, by
themselves, and groups the remainder, unlike Wedmore, by a subject
arrangement, in various classes. By his more scientific description of
states Delteil has superseded Wedmore, and is now invariably quoted in
sale catalogues. How far even his catalogue is from being exhaustive is
proved by the numerous additional states, chiefly based on the
examination of the British Museum and Macgeorge collections, which Mr.
H. J. L. Wright has described in the July number (1921) of the _Print
Collector’s Quarterly_. It is understood that a new edition of Delteil
is projected, containing a definitive numeration of the states, in which
these and other corrections will be incorporated. The present list
attempts no description of states. The titles are given in M. Delteil’s
order, Wedmore’s numbers following in brackets, with the date of each
etching and a summary indication of the number of states at present
known to exist, quoted from Delteil except where the reference “_see_
Wright” is given.


I. EARLY EXPERIMENTS.

1 (78)--La Sainte Face, after P. de Champaigne. 1849.
2 (63)--La vache et l’ ânon, after P. J. de Loutherbourg. (2 states).[4]
3 (67)--Soldat de profil, after Salvator Rosa. 1849 (2 states).
4 (67a)--Soldat de face, after Salvator Rosa. 1849.
5 (64)--Le mouton et les mouches, after K. du Jardin. 1849 (2 states).
6 (65)--Les trois cochons couchés devant l’étable, after K. du
         Jardin. 1850 (2 states).
7 (66)--Les deux chevaux, after K. du Jardin. 1850.
8 (62)--La brebis et les deux agneaux, after A. van de Velde.
         1850? (2 states).
9 (68)--Le Pavillon de Mademoiselle et une partie du Louvre,
         after R. Zeeman. 1849 (3 states).
10 (69)--Entrée du Faubourg Saint-Marceau, à Paris, after R.
         Zeeman. 1850 (2 states).
11 (70)--Un moulin à eau près de Saint Denis, after R. Zeeman.
         1850 (2 states).
12 (71)--La rivière de Seine et l’angle du Mail, à Paris, after R.
         Zeeman. 1850 (2 states).
13 (72)--Galiot de Jean de Vyl de Rotterdam, after R. Zeeman. 1850 (3 states).
14 (73)--Bateaux de Harlem à Amsterdam, after R. Zeeman. 1850 (4 states).
15 (75)--Pêcheurs de la Mer du Sud, after R. Zeeman. 1850 (2 states).
16 (74)--Passagers de Calais à Flessingue, after R. Zeeman. 1850 (2 states).


II. VIEWS OF PARIS.

17 (1)--Titre des “Eaux-fortes sur Paris.” 1852.
18 (2)--Dédicace à Reynier Nooms, dit Zeeman. 1854.
19 (3)--Ancienne porte du Palais de Justice. 1854 (3 states).
20 (4)--Qu’âme pure gémisse. 1854 (2 states).
21 (5)--Armes symboliques delà Ville de Paris. 1854 (3 states)
22 (6)--Fluctuat nec mergitur. 1854.
23 (7)--Le Stryge. 1853 (8 states).
24 (8)--Le Petit Pont. 1850 (7 states--_see_ Wright).
25 (9)--L’ Arche du Pont Notre-Dame. 1853 (7 states--_see_ Wright).
26 (10)--La Galerie Notre-Dame. 1853 (5 states).
27 (11)--La rue des Mauvais Garçons. 1854 (3 states).
28 (12)--La Tour de l’ Horloge. 1852 (10 states--_see_ Wright).
29 (13)--Tourelle de la rue de la Tixéranderie. 1852 (4 states--_see_ Wright).
30 (14)--Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. 1852 (8 states).
31 (15)--La Pompe Notre-Dame. 1852 (9 states).
32 (16)--La Petite Pompe. 1854. (2 states).
33 (17)--Le Pont-Neuf. 1853 (10 states--_see_ Wright).
34 (18)--Le Pont-au-Change. 1854 (12 states--_see_ Wright).
35 (19)--L’ Espérance. 1854 (3 states--_see_ Wright).
36 (20)--La Morgue. 1854 (7 states).
37 (21)--L’ Hôtellerie de la Mort. 1854.
38 (22)--L’Abside de Notre-Dame de Paris. 1854 (8 states).
39 (--)--O toi dégustateur. 1854 (2 states).
40 (23)--Tombeau de Molière. 1854 (2 states).
41 (24)--Tourelle de la rue de l’ Ecole-de-Médecine. 1861 (13
         states--_see_ Wright).
42 (25)--Rue des Chantres. 1862 (5 states--_see_ Wright).
43 (58)--Collège Henri IV. 1864 (11 states--_see_ Wright).
44 (27)--Bain-froid Chevrier. 1864 (6 states).
45 (26)--Le Ministère de la Marine. 1865 (6 states).
46 (29)--Le Pont-Neuf et la Samaritaine de dessous la 1ʳᵉ arche
         du Pont-au-Change. 1855 (4 states).
47 (28)--Le Pont-au-Change vers 1784, after Nicolle. 1855
         (6 states--_see_ Wright).
48 (76)--La Salle des Pas-perdus 1855 (4 states).
49 (30)--Rue Pirouette aux Halles. 1860 (6 states).
50 (84)--Passerelle du Pont-au-Change après l’ incendie de
         1621. 1860 (8 states--_see_ Wright).
51 (31)--Partie de la Cité vers la fin du XVIIᵉ siècle. 1861 (8 states).
52 (85)--Le Grand Châtelet vers 1780. 1861 (3 states).
53 (60)--L’Ancien Louvre, after R. Zeeman. 1866 (6 states).


III. VARIOUS VIEWS.

54 (33)--Porte d’un ancient Couvent, rue Mirebeau, à
         Bourges. 1851 (3 states--_see_ Wright).
55 (35)--Rue des Toiles à Bourges. 1853 (8 states--_see_ Wright).
56 (34)--Ancienne habitation à Bourges. 1860 (5 states).
57 (77a)--Château de Chenonceau (1st plate). 1856.
58 (77)--Château de Chenonceau (2nd plate). 1856 (3 states).
59 (81)--Ruines du Château de Pierrefonds. 1858 (3 states--_see_ Wright).
60 (83)--Chevet de St.-Martin-sur-Renelle, after P. Langlois. 1860 (3 states).
61 (32)--Entrée du Couvent des Capucins, à Athènes. 1854 (3 states).
62 (79)--Plan du Combat de Sinope. 1853 (2 states).
63 (46)--Couverture du voyage à la Nouvelle-Zélande.
         1866 (8 states--_see_ Wright).
64 (36)--Le Pilote de Tonga. 1856 (2 states).
65 (38)--Tête de Chien de la Nouvelle-Hollande. 1850 (2 states)
66 (37)--Le Malingre Cryptogame. 1860 (4 states).
67 (40)--Nouvelle-Calédonie. Grande case indigène. 1863 (5 states).
68 (41)--Océanie, pêche aux palmes. 1863 (4 states).
69 (42)--Presqu’ île de Banks. Pointe des Charbonniers,
         Akaroa. 1863 (7 states--_see_ Wright).
70 (39)--Greniers indigènes à Akaroa. 1865 (5 states--_see_ Wright).
71 (43)--Etat de la colonie française d’Akaroa. 1865 (5 states)
72 (44)--La Chaumière du Colon. 1866 (3 states).
73 (80)--San Francisco. 1856 (4 states).
74 (45)--Prô-volant des Iles Mulgrave. 1866 (6 states--_see_ Wright).


IV. PORTRAITS.

74a (--)--Meryon assis devant son chevalet. 1849? (no proof exists).
75 (--)--Eugène Bléry. 1849? (no proof known to exist).
76 (--)--Edmond de Courtives. 1849?
77 (86)--Casimir Le Conte. 1856(2 states).
78 (87)--Evariste Boulay-Paty, after David d’Angers. 1861 (3 states).
79 (88)--François Viète. 1861 (11 states--_see_ Wright).
80 (92)--René de Burdigale, after C. de Passe. 1861 (5 states--_see_ Wright).
81 (89)--Pierre Nivelle, after M. Lasne. 1861 (6 states).
82 (91)--Jean Besly, after Jaspar Isac. 1861 (4 states).
83 (93)--L. J.-Marie Bizeul. 1861 (5 states).
84 (90)--Th. Agrippa d’ Aubigné, after J. Hébert. 1862 (4 states).
85 (94)--Benjamin Fillon. 1862 (5 states).
86 (95)--Armand Guéraud. 1862 (3 states--_see_ Wright).


V. FRONTISPIECES, ADDRESSES, REBUSES, MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS.

87 (47)--Adresse de Rochoux. 1856? (5 states--_see_ Wright).
88 (48a)--Vers à Eugène Bléry (small plate). 1854.
89 (48)--Vers à Eugène Bléry (large plate). 1854 (2 states--_see_ Wright).
90 (--)--L’Attelage.
91 (49)--La loi lunaire, 1st plate. 1856 (3 states--_see_ Wright).
92 (50)--La loi lunaire, 2nd plate. 1866 (6 states--_see_ Wright).
93 (51)--La loi solaire. 1855.
94 (82)--Présentation du Valère Maxime au roi Louis XI.
         1860 (6 states--_see_ Wright).
95 (54)--Projet d’encadrement pour le portrait d’Armand
         Guéraud. 1862 (10 states--_see_ Wright; there is
         another, following Delteil’s 6th, still undescribed)
96 (61)--Frontispice pour le catalogue de Th. de Leu. 1866.
97, 98 (52, 53)--Projets de billets d’action (2 states--_see_ Wright).
99 (59)--Petit Prince Dito. 1864 (3 states--_see_ Wright).
100 (55)--Rébus: La Vendetta. 1863 (2 states).
101 (57)--Rébus: Béranger. 1863 (4 states--_see_ Wright).
102 (56)--Rébus: Morny. 1866 (3 states).

[Illustration: (_From a proof in the possession of Campbell Dodgson,
Esq., M.A., C.B.E._).

PLATE 1. CHARLES MERYON. BY FÉLIX BRACQUEMOND. 9 × 5-7/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 2. TITRE DES EAUX-FORTES SUR PARIS. (D.17.) 6-1/2 ×
4-15/16 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 3. DÉDICACE À REYNIER NOOMS, DIT ZEEMAN. (D.18.)
6-15/16 × 2-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 4. ANCIENNE PORTE DU PALAIS DE JUSTICE. (D.19).
THIRD STATE. 3-7/16 × 3-3/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 5. ARMES SYMBOLIQUES DE LA VILLE DE PARIS. (D.21.)
THIRD STATE. 5-3/8 × 4-3/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 6. LE STRYGE. (D.23.) EIGHTH STATE. 6-3/4 × 5-1/8
in.]

[Illustration: LE STRYGE.]

[Illustration: PLATE 7. LE PETIT PONT. (D.24.) FIFTH STATE. 10-1/4 ×
7-1/2 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 8. L’ARCHE DU PONT NOTRE-DAME. (D.25.) THIRD STATE.
6 × 7-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 9. LA GALERIE NOTRE-DAME. (D.26.) THIRD STATE.
11-1/8 × 6-15/16 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 10. LA RUE DES MAUVAIS GARÇONS (D.27.) THIRD STATE.
5 × 3-7/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 11. LA TOUR DE L’HORLOGE. (D.28.) THIRD STATE.
10-5/16 × 7-1/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 12. TOURELLE DE LA RUE DE LA TIXÉRANDERIE. (D.29.)
SECOND STATE. 9-3/4 × 5-3/16 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 13. SAINT-ÉTIENNE-DU-MONT. (D.30.) FIFTH STATE.
9-3/4 × 5-1/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 14. LA POMPE NOTRE-DAME. (D.31.) NINTH STATE. 6-3/4
× 9-7/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 15. LA PETITE POMPE. (D.32.) SECOND STATE. 4-1/4 x
3-1/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 16. LE PONT-NEUF. (D.33.) EIGHTH STATE. 7-3/16 ×
7-1/4 in.]

[Illustration: LE PONT-NEUF.]

[Illustration: PLATE 17. LE PONT-AU-CHANGE. (D.84.) SECOND STATE. 6-1/8
× 13-1/16 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 18. LE PONT-AU-CHANGE. (D.34.) NINTH STATE. 6-1/4 ×
13-1/16 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 19. L’ESPÉRANCE. (D.35.) (VERS DESTINÉS À
ACCOMPAGNER LE PONT-AU-CHANGE.) 2-1/2 × 5in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 20. LA MORGUE. (D. 36.) THIRD STATE. 9-1/8 × 8-1/8
in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 21. L’HÔTELLERIE DE LA MORT. (D.37.) TWO PLATES
EACH 4-3/4 × 1-3/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 22. L’ABSIDE DE NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS. (D.38.) FOURTH
STATE. 6-1/2 × 11-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 23. TOMBEAU DE MOLIÈRE. (D.40.) SECOND STATE. 2-5/8
× 2-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 24. CHARLES MERYON, 1858. BY LÉOPOLD FLAMENG. 8-3/4
× 10-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 25. TOURELLE DE LA RUE DE L’ÉCOLE-DE-MÉDECINE.
(D.41.) SIXTH STATE. 8-3/8 × 5-3/16 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 26. TOURELLE DE LA RUE DE L’ÉCOLE-DE-MÉDECINE.
(D.41) NINTH STATE. 8-3/8 × 5-3/16 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 27. RUE DES CHANTRES. (D.42.) FIRST STATE. 11-3/4 ×
5-7/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 28. RUE DES CHANTRES. (D.42.) FOURTH STATE. 11-3/4
× 5-7/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 29. COLLÈGE HENRI IV. (D.48.) SIXTH STATE. 11-5/8 ×
18-7/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 30. BAIN-FROID CHEVRIER. (D. 44.) FOURTH STATE.
5-1/8 × 5-5/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 31. LE MINISTÈRE DE LA MARINE. (D. 45.) FIRST
STATE. 6-5/8 × 5-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 32. LE MINISTÈRE DE LA MARINE. (D. 45.) FIFTH
STATE. 6-5/8 × 5-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 33. LE PONT-NEUF ET LA SAMARITAINE (D. 46.) THIRD
STATE. 5-11/16 × 8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 34. LE PONT-AU-CHANGE VERS 1784, D’APRÈS NICOLLE.
(D. 47.) THIRD STATE. 5-5/16 × 9-3/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 36. LA SALLE DES PAS-PERDUS À L’ANCIEN
PALAIS-DE-JUSTICE. (D. 48.) FOURTH STATE. 10-5/8 × 17-1/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 36. RUE PIROUETTE AUX HALLES. (D. 49.) THIRD STATE.
6-1/8 × 4-9/16 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 37. PARTIE DE LA CITÉ VERS LA FIN DU XVIIe SIÈCLE.
(D. 51.) SEVENTH STATE. 6 × 12-5/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 38. L’ANCIEN LOUVRE, D’APRÈS UNE PEINTURE DE
ZEEMAN. (D. 53.) FIFTH STATE. 6-5/8 × 10-1/2 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 39. PORTE D’UN ANCIEN COUVENT À BOURGES. (D. 54.)
SECOND STATE. 6-5/8 x 4-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 40. RUE DES TOILES À BOURGES. (D. 55.) FIFTH STATE.
8-1/2 × 4-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 41. ANCIENNE HABITATION À BOURGES. (D. 56.)
FOURTH STATE. 9-5/8 x 5-7/16 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 42. ENTRÉE DU COUVENT DES CAPUCINS À ATHÈNES. (D.
61.) THIRD STATE. 7-5/8 × 5 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 43. NOUVELLE-CALÉDONIE. GRANDE CASE INDIGÈNE SUR LE
CHEMIN DE BALLADE À POEPO. (D. 67.) FOURTH STATE. 5-5/8 × 9-3/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 44. OCÉANIE, PECHE AUX PALMES. (D. 68.) FOURTH
STATE. 6-1/4 × 13-1/4 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 45. LA CHAUMIÈRE DU COLON. (D. 72.) THIRD STATE.
3-1/8 × 3 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 46. PRÔ-VOLANT DES ÎLES MULGRAVE. (D. 74.) FIFTH
STATE. 5-3/4 × 3-1/8 in.]

[Illustration: PLATE 47. L. J.-MARIE BIZEUL. (D.83.) FOURTH STATE 6-1/2
× 4-5/8 in.]


FOOTNOTES:

[1] In each case the dimensions given are those of the original plate,
and not of the subject or engraved surface.

[2] A list of the contents of the set, “Eaux-Fortes sur Paris,” may be
found useful; it is as follows:--

A. Meryon’s portrait by Bracquemond.

1. The title.
 2. Dedication to R. Zeeman.
 3. Porte du Palais de Justice (frontispiece).
 4. Verses, “Qu’âme pure gémisse.”
 5. Arms of the City of Paris.
 6. Le Stryge (numbered 1).
 7. Le Petit Pont (numbered 2).
 8. L’Arche du Pont Notre-Dame (numbered 3).
 9. La Galerie Notre-Dame (numbered 4).
10. La Rue des Mauvais Garçons.
11. La Tour de l’Horloge (numbered 5).
12. Tourelle de la rue de la Tixéranderie (numbered 6).
13. St. Etienne-du-Mont (numbered 7).
14. La Pompe Notre-Dame (numbered 8).
15. La Petite Pompe.
16. Le Pont-Neuf (numbered 9).
17. Le Pont-au-Change (numbered 10).
18. Verses, “L’Espérance.”
19. La Morgue (numbered 11).
20. Verses, “L’Hôtellerie de la Mort.”
21. L’Abside de Notre-Dame (numbered 12).
22. Tombeau de Molière.


[3] This portrait is extremely rare, as only ten impressions were
taken; it has been reproduced by heliogravure. The impression
reproduced in this book is in the collection of the author.

[4] When states are not mentioned it is to be understood that there is
only one state.





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