The Influence Of The Far East

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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In his treatment of buildings, particularly in his earlier etchings, Whistler was undoubtedly influenced by the work of Charles Méryon, one of the earliest and greatest etchers of architectural subjects. The life of this artist is one of the saddest stories in modern art. Charles Méryon, was born in 1821; he was the son of a French dancer, and his father is said to have been an Englishman of good family, but during his early life he had little assistance from either of his parents, and from his boyhood he had to struggle to make his own way in the Bohemian underworld of Paris.

During Méryon’s lifetime, unfortunately, etchings were not so popular as they are today. For a century and a half after Rembrandt, etching, as a pure and separate art, lay comparatively unnoticed, but undeterred by want of patrons, poverty, and ill-health, Méryon devoted himself to the revival of this almost forgotten art, and became one of its greatest masters that the world has yet seen. To record on copper the beauty and interest of the architecture of Paris became the passion of Méryon’s life, and his etchings are unique for the imagination and emotional force they display combined with scrupulously exact drawing of the architectural features which form his theme. His famous etching ‘Le Stryge’, showing us a view of Paris from Notre Dame, with one of the quaint gargoyles of the Cathedral occupying a prominent place in the foreground, reveals not only the perfection of his technique, with its fine, nervous line and rich velvety blacks, but also the blend of realism and imagination which characterises this artist’s work.

These masterly views of Paris were offered for sale by the artist at the price of one franc (then worth about ten pence in English money), but even at this ridiculous figure they did not find enough purchasers to enable him to keep body and soul together. Privation, hardship, and want of proper nourishment inevitably told on his health, and eventually his nerves gave way and he was put away as insane in the hospital of Charenton. But though of a nervous temperament, his brain was not diseased, and after some months of good feeding in the hospital Méryon became normal, and it was seen that his breakdown was wholly due to starvation. He was allowed to leave Charenton and began to work again, drawing and etching in Paris, but the unhappy genius had no better fortune and seemed unable to secure the minimum amount of food that a human body requires. Again he starved, with the same result, his mind became unhinged and he was taken back to Charenton, where he died in 1868.

By a cruel irony of fate the etchings began to be appreciated almost immediately after the etcher’s death. Never before or since has the art world seen so rapid and sensational an increase in value. The explanation is that the interest excited by the plates of Whistler and Seymour Haden led to a feverish hunt after other etchers, and so the fame of Méryon was established. Within a few years of his death the etchings he had vainly tried to sell for ten pence apiece were changing hands at five pounds; the prices of them rose rapidly and steadily from tens to hundreds of pounds, and within recent years rich collectors have paid more than a thousand pounds to secure a fine impression of an etching by Méryon.