X 
 
 / 
 
it 
 
 The Edition is limited to One Hundred and Thirteen copies , 
 of which this is A T o . 
 
MERYON 
 
 AND MERYON’S PARIS 
 
 WITH A 
 
 DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF THE 
 ARTIST'S WORK. 
 
 BY FREDERICK WEDMORE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 A. W. THIBAUDEAU, 
 
 1 8, Green Street, Leicester Square. 
 1879. 
 
(All rights reserved by the Author.) 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Meryon ......... I 
 
 Notes for the Amateur 34 
 
 The Art Work of Meryon . . . .41 
 
 Original Etchings, “ Paris,” the published Set, 
 
 Nos. 1 — 23 
 
 Original Etchings of Paris, not in the Set, 
 
 Nos. 24 — 27 
 
 Etchings — chiefly of Paris — being Free Trans- 
 lations, Nos. 28 — 32 
 
 Original Etchings of Bourges, Nos. 33 — 35 
 
 The Minor Work of Meryon . . . .66 
 
 Records and Fancies, Nos. 36 — 61 
 Mechanical Copies, Nos. 62—94 
 
 Portraits of the Artist 77 
 
MERYON . 1 
 
 I. 
 
 OW more than half a century ago, a Lon- 
 
 don physician — suave, immaculate, irre- 
 proachable, alter his kind — met, followed, and 
 captured a Paris dancing-girl ; and the offspring 
 of their loves, such as they were, was the great 
 artist, Meryon. The offspring of their loves 
 being that great artist, with a spirit at once 
 the most original, imaginative, and persistent, a 
 hand at once the most delicate and the strong- 
 est, one is curious to know whether the germ of 
 some fine quality of his, in passion or skill, can- 
 not have been inherited— whether the unlicensed 
 connection which gave him birth had at least 
 
 1 Reprinted, by permission, from the Nmeteenth 
 Century (May, 1878), with a few variations. 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 some heart in it, or whether it was but the vulgar 
 and shabby intrigue of the green room and the 
 
 cabinet particulier. 
 
 The truest, the most trustworthy story we are 
 likely to get, answers that question not quite in 
 the darkest way. Meryon was one of two chil- 
 dren, and the other, a girl, was taken to England 
 by her father, the physician, and there, in spite 
 of the disadvantages and difficulties of her birth, 
 there was made for her what the teller of the 
 story describes to me as ‘ a brilliant marriage.’ 
 She took her place in the world. Meryon him- 
 self — Charles Meryon, born in 1821 --remained 
 with his mother, whom after some years the 
 father seems to have entirely quitted ; the cause 
 of it, again I hear, the offensiveness of the chil- 
 dren’s grandmother. The vulgarity of the old, 
 of the frowsy, of the unattractive, is a vulgarity 
 one cannot endure ; and the woman who allowed 
 to Meryon’s mother the life she led — nay, who 
 urged her, it is said, to a worse — is not likely to 
 have brightened for the physician the narrow 
 Paris home into which this and that intolerable 
 
MER YON’S PARIS. 3 
 
 relative of the dancer he had lived with would 
 be prone to insinuate herself unbidden and un- 
 desired. The physician went his way, taking, 
 as I have said, the daughter with him, and leav- 
 ing the son to the mother, and making her some 
 not inconsiderable gift of money, perhaps even 
 for some years a stated and sufficient allowance. 
 At all events, in Meryon’s childhood and boy- 
 hood the means of living did not seem to be 
 lacking. He was destined for the navy, and 
 entered it at the right moment, leaving it to be 
 an artist when still a young man and a lieu- 
 tenant. Meryon had owed to his father some 
 material provision for his life. To his mother— 
 the sensitiveness, fineness, and passion of whose 
 nature he believed he had inherited — he owed 
 the hourly cares and thoughts for him that were 
 much of her existence. Her life went out in 
 obscurity — under the cloud of illicit ways, in the 
 fettered freedom of a demi-monde — when he was 
 a youth ; and perhaps the most impulsive and 
 resolute, imaginative and nervous, of all the 
 youth of Paris was left surrounded at the best, 
 
4 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 as regards kindred, by a vulgar entourage of 
 pochard and canaille , in a strange loneliness. 
 
 His nature had the combined gentleness and 
 fire of a man of genius ; the fire ready to flare 
 out when work was to be done or opposition to 
 be encountered ; the gentleness to be bestowed 
 in the rare moments of sympathetic friendship. 
 The people who knew him in his later time, 
 artists, critics, kind-hearted connoisseurs, fellow- 
 workers, companions, say that he had the charm 
 of genius. He was pleasant to be with. His 
 obstinacy, however, was from the first as indomi- 
 table as his activity at the last was nervous and 
 unhealthy. In the Peninsula of Banks, New 
 Zealand, during his long voyage round the 
 world, he and his comrades were forbidden to 
 make use of the captain’s little boat, and their 
 pride was touched by the restraint Mdryon 
 himself would make a boat, he said. A tree was 
 hewn for the purpose, a tent set up for Meryon 
 near the shore, but within range of wild beasts. 
 There for three months young Meryon worked, 
 his food brought to him by his fellows, his hands 
 
MER YON’S PARIS. 5 
 
 raw with the persistency of his labour. The 
 boat once launched, the captain was moved to 
 admiration. It should be set up at home, he 
 declared, in the naval arsenal of Toulon. Some- 
 where or other there it must now be. 
 
 The artistic instinct of Meryon made naval 
 life distasteful. Abandoning the navy, and find- 
 ing that there were substantial obstacles to his 
 becoming a painter, he determined to be an en- 
 graver, and entering after a while the atelier of 
 M. Blery, he left it in 1850, at the age of twenty- 
 nine, to take humble chambers in the Rue St. 
 Etienne du Mont, and to live if possible by the 
 steady pursuit of his art. Those were the days 
 of the beginning of our modern practice of the 
 art of etching. Bracquemond, Flameng, Jacque- 
 mart were young. The two first, at least, lived 
 somewhat in the society of Meryon. Bracque- 
 mond etched two portraits of him; in one he is 
 sitting in a chair, in the other he is as a 
 face carved in bas-relief in marble. 4 Messire 
 Bracquemond,’ wrote Meryon, in the quaint 
 verses he even then affected, and which sub- 
 
6 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 sequently he was wont to set under certain of 
 his prints : 
 
 “ Messire Bracquemond 
 A peint en cette image 
 Le sombre Mdryon 
 Au grotesque visage.” 
 
 A French critic, M. Burty, availing himself of 
 the publicity of the Gazette des Beaux- Arts, in 
 1863, gave a catalogue of Mery on’s work, which 
 for practical purposes was for the time suffi- 
 cient. 1 Some classification was attempted by 
 this chronicler ; but it is one broad division that 
 chiefly requires to be made. For it was when 
 Meryon, after years of absence, had returned for 
 the first time a man to the city of his birth, 
 and while he was employed for money’s sake in 
 much insignificant and mechanical labour of 
 copying, which even an original engraver, until 
 great fame has reached him, can hardly escape 
 — it was at this time, and in the midst of work 
 which served only its purpose of the hour and 
 day, that Meryon had that vision of Paris, the 
 
 1 I am indebted to conversation with M. Burty for more 
 than one of the particulars contained in this notice. 
 
MER YON'S PARIS. 
 
 7 
 
 ultimate realization of which, with passion and 
 with patience, lifted him into the rank of the 
 greatest artists that can be. 
 
 Meryon’s work, then, may be broadly divided 
 into two classes : first, the work done mainly in 
 his earliest time, after drawings of many subjects 
 by old French and other artists — Renier Zeeman, 
 the Dutchman, was one of them ; — and second, 
 the sometimes partly original, but oftener 
 wholly original work, in which best of all he 
 recorded the characteristics of the Paris of his 
 own day, and yet of the Middle Age, which 
 were passing away under the improving hands of 
 the Second Empire in its first years. There are 
 also the New Zealand views, drawn if not etched 
 very early, and the insignificant or bizarre fan- 
 cies of his latter days, when his mind declined ; 
 but the work of artistic interest is that in which 
 he recorded Old Paris, and he did this well in 
 the etchings which were copies of old drawings 
 which his art and feeling had made into finer 
 pictures, and supremely well in the etchings 
 which were wholly original. 
 
8 
 
 MERY ON. 
 
 Fancy him, then, established in a lonely way, 
 and yet of course with some artistic comrades 
 within reach, in the cabin-like rooms of the 
 humblest floor of the street, the north side of 
 which is occupied by the church that gives that 
 street its name — St. Etienne du Mont — -and 
 which Meryon made the subject of one of the 
 most harmonious and mysterious of his works. 
 I went one evening in the spring of ’77 to see 
 the church and street : the street itself will have 
 historic interest as that from which so many 
 of Meryon’s finest etchings are dated ; but I 
 went chiefly to see, in a way in which hardly any 
 other of the subjects of his pictures would allow 
 one to see, how much or little of voluntary 
 artistic composition entered into his work of 
 record. Not much here, as far as concerns the 
 mere lines of his plate, though the light and 
 shade on the St. Etienne were his own. The 
 Gothic college to the left had disappeared — 
 was threatening no doubt to disappear when he 
 executed his print. But the church itself which 
 remained — of that his record had been abso- 
 
ME R YON’S PARIS. 
 
 9 
 
 lutely and delicately faithful, both the building 
 and its position, half behind the massive angle 
 of the Pantheon. The humble rooms he lived 
 in, on that side of the church not seen in the pic- 
 ture, must have looked upon the church’s bare 
 south wall. The quarter, in any journey from 
 reputable parts of Paris, would be reached by 
 passage from richer street to poorer, and so to 
 poorer again. A lost quarter, even behind and 
 beyond the shabbiest of the quarters of students ; 
 around it, in strange lanes, the dwellings of the 
 chiffonniers , the rag-gatherers, who with basket 
 on back cluster towards it at midnight from 
 nightly search among offal and gutter, and 
 wander out from it once more when evening has 
 come again, to spread themselves over the town. 
 Beyond it an undiscovered country, known only 
 to the police and to the workers in strange 
 trades plied in remote places. There Meryon 
 lived. 
 
 That old-world quarter of Paris — a lost 
 quarter, a quarter seemingly deserted, yet 
 thickly peopled all the while — was favourable 
 
IO 
 
 MERYON. 
 
 to Meryon’s art, to the growth of his imagina- 
 tion, to the strength and endurance of the im- 
 pression which the mysterious and crowded city 
 made on him in these the first years of his living 
 there in manhood. He began his study of Paris, 
 observing consciously the quaint combinations 
 of window and house-roof, the chimneys, the 
 tourelles in quiet back streets, narrow blind lanes 
 where the Middle Age lingered, and perhaps not 
 less consciously taking note of that moral aspect 
 of Paris which was to colour his work and to 
 bring into strange and new juxtaposition ele- 
 ments of beauty and horror the fascination of 
 whose union he was almost the first to appre- 
 ciate. A high literary genius, Victor Hugo, had 
 blended beauty and horror in his great romance, 
 Notre Dame de Paris } which Paris had inspired. 
 But in pictorial art Meryon was to be alone, and 
 the Paris that he pictured was pictured in a 
 way only too much his own — only too much 
 above and beyond the valuing of those to whom 
 he first submitted his work. 
 
 I went last year into the shop of a little- 
 
ME R YON’S PARIS. 
 
 n 
 
 known dealer, and asked for Meryon’s etchings. 
 * Views of Paris ? ’ he answered, and knew what I 
 meant ; but knew no better than did the print- 
 sellers of the artist’s own lifetime how entirely 
 these things were pictures, how much they 
 were visions. Well, with little encouragement, 
 Meryon did his work — none the less priceless as 
 a record because it bore on it too the mark of his 
 own sentiment — did the etching of St. Etienne, 
 of the Tour de l’Horloge, of the Cathedral of 
 Notre Dame seen from behind and from over the 
 water, from places now strangely changed ; did 
 the etching of the thick and speechless uncom- 
 municative walls of the Rue des Mauvais Garmons 
 (Baudelaire’s favourite), and ‘The Doric little 
 Morgue,’ the quay alive with the bustle and 
 excitement of an instant of horrible arrival. He 
 did these things, and took them to the dealers. 
 One refused, and another. Wrapping up his 
 portfolio he went on again — tramped, lonely and 
 unencouraged, round the Paris he was beginning 
 to hate. 
 
 Disappointment and neglect told soon upon 
 
12 
 
 MERY ON. 
 
 the delicate organization of the artist. Whim- 
 sical he had always been ; exaggerated in his 
 hates and loves and in the very efforts of his will ; 
 and now some years of poverty and isolation — 
 some years of the production, amidst complete 
 indifference, of immense and immortal work— 
 began to thrust into prominence those traits in 
 his character which could not be noticed without 
 suspicion and fear. He fell violently in love with 
 some little girl of the humble and uneducated 
 class — a fillette de cremerie , a bright young 
 woman, who stood, I suppose, behind the 
 counter of the shop at which he got his morning 
 meal. The charm of the man in his pleasant 
 hours, his genius, his spirit, the prodigious skill 
 of his hand, were less apparent to the Parisian 
 shop-girl than the surprises of his wayward 
 temper, his exaltation, his not unfrequent gloom. 
 It was no use, his passion and beseeching — elle 
 ne voulait pas de lui. She stood aloof, and he at 
 last went on his way, embittered and saddened. 
 The hardness of his living, the neglect of his 
 art, the deprivation even of personal pleasure, of 
 
MER YON’S PARIS. 
 
 13 
 
 the excitement of love — these things curdled 
 in his brain, and hallucinations crowded round 
 him. 
 
 He had one constant and most kind patron 
 and encourager — Monsieur Niel, librarian at the 
 Ministry of the Interior, who had tried, and not 
 always without success, to get him commissions, 
 and who was forming even then by purchase, 
 when the prints had no recognized value, what 
 was destined to be the earliest of the great col- 
 lections of Meryon’s work. Meeting this gentle- 
 man one day, Meryon looked aside with a frown 
 and an expression of injury and grievance. He 
 would have nothing to say to M. Niel. ‘Voyoiis? 
 said M. Niel ; ‘ what is it then, Meryon ?’ 1 You 
 
 rob me/ was the answer, ‘ and make a profit by 
 my work.’ Another day, a critic, who among 
 the earliest had recognized the genius of Meryon 
 to create and interpret — to throw his spirit and 
 the very spirit of Paris into his record of the 
 semblance of its stones — met him in similar 
 mood. 4 The money that you owe me/ said 
 Meryon, when he was forced to speak. But 
 
H 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 there was no money owed between them 
 at all. 
 
 And so the artist, sufficiently neglected indeed 
 from without, came to carry within him his most 
 implacable enemies. In his imagination, they 
 lingered in wait behind the corners of the 
 streets — would be down upon him to distress 
 and thwart him if he paused long or was heedless 
 of who approached. And so with nervous and 
 frightened eye, but with hand still keenly obe- 
 dient and splendidly controlled, he stood on 
 some empty space of quay, sketching, as his 
 wont had been, with the finest of pencil points, 
 the angles of house and church, bits of window, 
 roof and chimney, to be afterwards pieced care- 
 fully together and used in the etching of the 
 plate. The strokes drawn by his pencil were 
 often drawn upwards instead of downwards. 
 Often the sketches were discarded : the point of 
 view had not been the right one. Thus I have 
 seen a drawing of the Pompe Notre-Dame, taken 
 from under a bridge whose arch, as an element 
 in the picture, prominent in the foreground, he 
 
ME R YON’S PARIS. 
 
 15 
 
 afterwards removed. There is a drawing, too, for 
 the right side of his Abside de Notre-Dame , in 
 which the line of varied house-roofs is higher 
 than in the plate. He saw subsequently that 
 the houses must be lower, smaller, and more 
 distant, to give the sense of height and domina- 
 tion and an almost lonely grandeur to the struc- 
 ture of the cathedral that rises dark and solemn 
 against the evening sky. 
 
 These things, by which a perfect composition 
 was generally attained, he saw of course during 
 those best days — the years of 1850 to 1854 — in 
 which he was doing the masterpieces of his work. 
 Later, the skill of the hand was guided by no 
 keen judgment nor sane imagination; at last the 
 plates, or some of them, in certain of their states, 
 were disfigured by imaging the fancies of a mind 
 rebellious or vanished. 
 
 Presently — it was at a time when he had done 
 his finest work, but had not as yet drifted into 
 madness — Meryon removed for a while to Brus- 
 sels : a commission, obtained at the instance of 
 M. Niel, awaiting him from the Due d’Arem- 
 
i6 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 berg. Soon he came back. It was in the be- 
 ginning of 1858, and he installed himself in the 
 Rue des Fosses-Saint-Jacques. There his ill- 
 ness more completely declared itself. Discou- 
 raged, overwhelmed with his failure, he gave up 
 life : the common mechanical activities of life : 
 the trouble of dressing, undressing, eating- 
 down even to these small things, his energy was 
 gone. He could not be roused from his bed. 
 His friends at that time, recognizing that his 
 career was in the past — believing that almost on 
 any day they might hear that he was dead or in 
 the madhouse — brought one night the artist 
 Flameng to his bedside, and Flameng made 
 there a drawing of him, of which a reproduction 
 has since been published. That night, or a day 
 or two afterwards, he became dangerous, and 
 they took him away to Charenton in a cab. 
 
 The order, the care, of the great maison de 
 sante rapidly influenced him, and after some 
 period of probation, during which he did some 
 copyist’s work in his art, he was discharged. In 
 his new lodging of the Rue Duperre he retouched 
 
MER YON’S PARIS. 
 
 1 7 
 
 his coppers. Arrangements were made for the 
 publication of one or two of them in the Gazette 
 des Beaux- A rts and Fme A rts Quarterly Review ; 
 others, retouched, were printed anew by Delatre 
 — those especially that had not before been 
 printed by this printer of exceptional and un- 
 equalled skill. But no success of a substantial 
 kind came to Meryon’s work in M6ryon\s life. 
 His days were more and more agitated ; the 
 sense of failure preyed on him, though it was not 
 to that that he attributed his illness. ‘ I became 
 mad,’ said Meryon, ‘ the day I was going to sea, 
 when I was a boy and they told me of my birth. 
 The shock of it made me mad.’ That was very 
 probably a fancy. 
 
 In 1867 he returned to Charenton, there think- 
 ing himself no longer Meryon, but some saintly 
 character of some far-off time ; and there, next 
 year, obstinately refusing sustenance, because he 
 said there was not food enough in the world, and 
 he was getting more than his share — there, in 
 February, 1868, he died. { Sa barque / as an 
 old comrade of his on the high seas said finely at 
 
 C 
 
i8 
 
 MERY ON. 
 
 his grave — * sa barque , a tout instant noyee , courait 
 sans repos au naufrage * 
 
 Long afterwards, one curious and careful to 
 know about Jais life went to Charenton for par- 
 ticulars — Charenton, outside Paris ; the gaunt 
 white house in the bareish land. Did the Doctor 
 remember Meryon ? ‘ Meryon — Meryon ? No. 
 
 Let us see, however.' And he consulted a book. 
 ‘Meryon? Oh, yes. Number six hundred and 
 forty- three. See here — a man who at the last 
 was writing incoherent memorials. I will show 
 them you.’ And, ringing the bell, ‘Send down 
 here the portfolios of No. 643/ 
 
 The immense artist— number six hundred and 
 forty-three ! 
 
 II. 
 
 What was the artist’s work ? 
 
 The original work of Meryon was called into 
 being, so to say, by the destruction of Old Paris, 
 which he looked upon not so much with an anti- 
 quarian as with an artistic and personal regret. 
 Had Meryon been genuinely antiquarian, he 
 
MERY ON'S PARIS . - 19 
 
 would have sketched details of architecture with 
 a colder correctness, but with less of living force. 
 As it was, he loved architecture, and knew it 
 more widely than any artist before. The great 
 strength of his draughtsmanship lay indeed in its 
 representation, and all the styles he represented 
 he represented with equal power; but in the 
 under-current of his work there is the mood of 
 passion of an individual mind. Therefore his 
 work combines, and will combine still more in 
 the future (when the actual remembrance of the 
 things it commemorates shall have passed away), 
 a certain antiquarian interest, dear to some, and 
 valuable no doubt to all, with that much higher 
 interest of work of an intense personality — work 
 which no one could do before, and which no one 
 has done since. 
 
 Likely enough, no other circumstance than 
 the passing away of that old vesture of the city 
 which he loved would have roused him to the 
 complete expression of himself in art. His 
 earlier work, after good masters, is adroit, but 
 hardly personal. Some skill to speak in his art 
 
20 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 had begun to come before the substance to be 
 spoken. Afterwards he failed as a painter : 
 some attempts at painting, during the early 
 Paris years, having proved to him not only the 
 presence of manual and technical difficulties hard 
 to overcome, but a defective vision for colour, so 
 that green was seen by him as red. The defec- 
 tiveness of vision for colour had its compensation 
 in an absolutely exceptional sensitiveness to tone 
 and gradation. Etching was his art ; and in the 
 etching of Paris this mysterious and brooding 
 spirit, whose care was for the past and the fami- 
 liar — never the new — found his particular work. 
 His sympathetic interest in his every subject, in 
 the place, in the association, in the spirit of the 
 scene, as well as in the lines and lights which he 
 followed with so infinite a subtlety, divides his 
 chronicle of Paris utterly from all others that 
 artists have made of cities — gives it a unity, lack- 
 ing, say, to that diligent and not unpicturesque 
 record which Wenceslaus Hollar made of the 
 London of the Commonwealth. And so it is 
 that his work has a personal stamp and charm 
 
ME R YON'S PARIS . 
 
 21 
 
 of his own imagination enriching the bare walls 
 and tottering houses — a charm recalling by that 
 imaginative quality the literary work of Victor 
 Hugo in Notre Dame de Paris , and of the great 
 English master in The Tale of Two Cities and in 
 Barnaby Rudge. And that imaginative, that 
 personal quality, joined to manual dexterity like- 
 wise unsurpassed, makes his etched work the 
 greatest and most profoundly personal of any 
 done since Rembrandt’s. 
 
 Putting aside the drier and less artistic among 
 the copies of other men’s work, and a few 
 minor records that were wholly his own — such 
 as the Ministere de la Marine , say, and the 
 Bain Froid Chevrier — Meryon executed during 
 his four great years, from 1850 to 1854, some 
 dozen and a half, or twenty plates, which in their 
 ensemble guarantee his fame. A quite limited 
 number of impressions having been taken in the 
 course of successive years, Meryon himself at last 
 destroyed the plates — ploughed deep burin lines 
 across them, in a moment of despair, as Mr. 
 Hamerton picturesquely informs us. I thank 
 
22 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 Heaven he did. For the truth is, if that was 
 madness, there was much method in it. The 
 plates were used up hopelessly ; and though no 
 doubt they might have been again retouched, 
 steeled, and so reproduced by the thousand in 
 the poorest of their forms, the artist in destroying 
 them did in the main but protect us from the 
 eventual outpouring, in the interests of the shop, 
 of masses of misleading impressions, libels upon 
 his art. His works are rare — the best of them, 
 in the best states, very rare ; but there are enough 
 of them, as there are enough of Rembrandts and 
 of the Liber prints of Turner, to be seen by those 
 anxious to see, and not too many to be cherished 
 and held as precious things. Etchings are works 
 of highest art only on the condition that the im- 
 pressions submitted are of finest quality. The 
 sharpness of the lines, the clearness of the lights, 
 the richness of the transfer from copper to paper 
 — these things, in their proper combination, are 
 only possible while the plate remains flawless. 
 And though impressions from Meryon’s plates 
 must now always be rare, the plates were not 
 
MERYON’S PARIS. 
 
 23 
 
 destroyed too soon. As it is, the prints differ 
 extremely in quality. Too many bad ones re- 
 main for the unwary. 
 
 The British Museum and two or three private 
 collections are in possession of examples of his 
 entire work. Isolated pieces, or a few carefully 
 gathered, are to be seen more frequently among 
 the lovers of art. Pieces here and there occur at 
 sales ; here and there in the portfolios of dealers. 
 But for the public to be properly acquainted with 
 them as a series, as a whole, as the work of a life, 
 there is needed an exhibition of them in their 
 choicest states and best impressions, and this is 
 an exhibition which even a society such as the 
 Burlington Fine Arts Club would do itself much 
 honour by undertaking. 
 
 For, though a single piece may show well 
 enough both manual skill and a sense of beauty 
 which shall be a surprise to the stranger, it is 
 only by a knowledge of the whole, or at all 
 events of several pieces carefully gathered, that 
 the personal sentiment can be known and valued 
 — that it can be felt how much more is in the 
 
24 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 artist’s thought and work than the mere stones 
 of the building he is recording, the mere water 
 whose steady flow under dark bridges he has 
 painted, so to say, as no one else ; how he is 
 possessed of a sense of the restless, eager, almost 
 tragical activity of the existence around him ; 
 how the character, the life, the mysteries, the 
 fortunes of Paris — the Paris unfrequented of the 
 tourist and the prosperous— are depicted on his 
 plates. 
 
 For what one print suggests, another print 
 confirms. The Rue des Mauvais Garqons y with 
 its gaunt house lines, its barred windows, its 
 darkly shadowed portal, and deserted ways — its 
 narrow pavement, along which two lonely figures 
 hurry, and * gather garments round them, pass, 
 nor pry’— has its companion in the Morgue , 
 where, before the tender and delicate lines of the 
 Doric building now destroyed, and before the 
 many-storied houses with windows indifferent or 
 listening, the weird figures of Meryon’s pencil 
 gaze idly or rush with terror : here, a cruel crowd 
 assembled heartless, the unmoved witnesses of 
 
MER YON’S PARIS. 
 
 25 
 
 the terrible arrival; there one woman in the 
 agony of dread or discovery, knowing or sur- 
 mising whose is the body borne with dropped 
 and heavy head, with wet limbs, from the river. 
 
 These things are conveyed with the strangest 
 
 and most fascinating and most impressive union 
 
 >/ 
 
 — Meryon’s alone — of a realistic art that recoils 
 from nothing of terrible, of shabby, of loathsome, 
 provided it be actual, true, and of our day, with 
 an imaginative art — an art of suggestion, almost 
 of fantasy — that speaks to the mind by symbols, 
 by hints of profound significance yet ever varying 
 interpretations — an art in this one sense akin to 
 that of the Melancholia and The Knight of Death. 
 And above these scenes, so depicted that the 
 realism which at first you looked for over all is 
 arrested and elevated by imagination, or the 
 imagination which at first you wanted over all is 
 disturbed by the healthy shock of realism — above 
 these scenes, these and so many others so de- 
 picted, there broods with satisfaction Meryon’s 
 Stryge — the horned and winged demon, an in- 
 carnation of all evil and disastrous things, which 
 
26 
 
 MERYON. 
 
 the Gothic imagination set among the carved 
 stones of Notre Dame, and which the genius of 
 Meryon understood and interpreted, as it looked 
 down from its lonely heights upon the life of the 
 city. Here and elsewhere Meryon recorded 
 strange things, terrible things, beautiful things, 
 but never his sense of this or that object — 
 building, church, or bridge — for its own sake 
 alone. He recorded in them his imagination of 
 Paris — his sense of various fortunes and many 
 lives. He did this with the truth of fact, and 
 the truth of poetic fiction. 
 
 The imaginative power never, except at will, 
 weakened his grasp of the actualities he wanted 
 to portray. I have spoken already of architec- 
 ture, of the equal force in seizing and recording 
 the characteristics of styles various or opposed, 
 the solemnity of the Gothic cathedral, the light- 
 ness and simplicity of the Morgue, the elaborate 
 luxuriance of the Renaissance waxing weightier 
 to the days of Louis Quatorze — witness the 
 church (St. Etienne itself) in the background of 
 the St. Etienne du Mont. But he had not only 
 
MER YON’S PARIS. 
 
 2 7 
 
 the sense of the picturesque and the charac- 
 teristic ; he had the sense of construction. Take 
 the Pompe — the engine-house by the river — and 
 its scaffolding, beam crossed by beam. Here 
 his pleasure in constructive work, however 
 humble, is shown by his close and careful follow- 
 ing of the woodwork to its darkest and furthest 
 recesses. His fame would be assured if it rested 
 only on the rendering of the labour of men’s 
 hands, from the fretted roof of the cathedral and 
 stately towers to the intricate timbers of the 
 engine-house, or the rough boarding quickly 
 placed round spots marked for destruction or 
 repair . 1 
 
 But while specially heedful of the streets and 
 bridges, quays and houses, amid which the weird 
 figures of his drama passed in playing their part, 
 
 1 Mr. Hamerton, generally strong and discriminating 
 in his praise, has blamed Meryon fora ‘puerile imitation 1 
 of the grain of wood in the Rue de la Tixeranderie. But 
 Meryon erred in good company — with Diirer and Lucas of 
 Leyden. (See the St. Jerome of Diirer, and an Entomb- 
 ment of Lucas of Leyden.) 
 
28 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 Meryon looked with no careless eyes on all of 
 Nature that was visible in Paris — on water and 
 sky. The Pont au Change — both the large 
 original etching and the exquisite interpretation 
 of Nicolle’s old design — the Pont Neuf, the 
 great A bside itself with its foreground of Seine 
 stream, will show us that no one like Meryon 
 has depicted running water, now shallow, now 
 deep, never mirror-like, never gathered into 
 waves, but rippling pleasantly against the angles 
 of the bridge piers, or flowing moody and sullen 
 under its darkest arches ; now in happy sunlight ; 
 now in profound and blackened shadow, sug- 
 gestive of the suicidal plunge and the slime of 
 the river-bed ; now again in the half lights, the 
 delicate semi-tones more beautiful and difficult. 
 Here, at least, there is success undisputed, and 
 in etched work quite unequalled, save in our own 
 day once and once only by the broad ripple of 
 the Thames in Agamemnon , and save, in the 
 great days, by the tranquil waters of Rembrandt, 
 which reflect the pleasant lines of house and tree 
 in Cottage and Dutch Haybarn , and of stream- 
 
MERY ON’S PARIS. 
 
 29 
 
 side, fence, and herbage in Cottage with white 
 Palings. 
 
 The great etchers have been very chary of 
 their treatment of skies, and M^ryon, in adven- 
 turing sometimes a little further, could not hope 
 to fare better than they. He would only have 
 copied Rembrandt had he left, for the most part, 
 his skies a blank ; the master found that that 
 simple proceeding, if properly combined with a 
 subtle toning of the landscape, best suggested 
 the open sky of open country — the stillness and 
 the spaciousness he loved. Therefore he departed 
 from it scarcely more than twice : once in the 
 rainstorm of the Three Trees; once in depicting in 
 a rare small landscape the limited light of dawn. 
 
 But Meryon’s skies were not the skies of open 
 country; no vast spaces of unbroken air, of light 
 uncrossed by shadows, but mostly fragments of 
 sky seen from between towering street-lines — the 
 grey, obscured, and lower sky of cities ; now and 
 again, as in the Abside , larger tracts, here charged 
 with brooding clouds, with birds flying low — the 
 ‘solemn, admonishing skies’ of a mind constant 
 
30 
 
 MERY ON. 
 
 to its own imaginations. In the Abside , with its 
 rolling cloud, his sky is at its best ; so it is in the 
 etching of the Pont an Change vers 1784 (after 
 Nicolle), and in the clouded air of the Pont Neuf. 
 But elsewhere his lines are now and then hard ; 
 his dots now and then mechanical in effect, though 
 never without meaning. He saw skies as a poeti- 
 cal artist is bound to see them, but his hand, in 
 rendering them, was not always of equal sure- 
 ness. The conditions of etching — the employ- 
 ment of pure lines— fettered him, and what if he 
 did fail sometimes, where Claude himself, the 
 artist of the sunset — the triumphant craftsman of 
 the plate, Dumesnil No. 15 — failed often! 
 
 But indeed his distant skies are often of mar- 
 vellous poetry, and the atmosphere between us 
 and those furthest skies is of singular fidelity. 
 Meryon felt the air, now keen and clear, now 
 misty ; now in the pleasantest places of brilliant 
 Paris, sunny as Van der Heyden’s or De Hooch’s ; 
 now thick and blackish grey, as it hangs slug- 
 gishly under damp dark arch or over the slime 
 of the banks of the river. 
 
ME R YON’S PARIS. 
 
 3i 
 
 Lastly, the figures of Meryon. Here, as no- 
 where else, reality and fantasy were allowed to 
 join. They are small always — little passing 
 masses of light, shade, and movement, to relieve, 
 to indicate, to suggest. They make no claim to 
 accuracy of draughtsmanship. But they are 
 always interesting, fascinating, and alive, always 
 in strange accord with the dominant note of the 
 subject, whether they are found in grace of 
 quietness or energy of action. Thus the tall and 
 tranquil elegance of the standing figure in the 
 Abside, almost sculpturesque in the simplicity of 
 its grace, like that of the figure leaning against 
 the doorway in the Rue de la Tixe'randerie^ fits 
 the sentiment no less than it suits the composi- 
 tion, and is Meryon’s and no other’s. Under the 
 arch of Le Pont Notre-Damey a woman’s figure, 
 standing, brooding nobly, is set well against the 
 weird activity of the figure springing downwards 
 by the rope. It is a page out of Eugene Sue 
 and the Mysteries of Paris. Under the shadow 
 of the College of Montaigu, now departed, sisters 
 of charity hie on their errand ; on the church 
 
32 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 steps a beggar will not be denied. Before the 
 Morgue there gather, as we have said already, 
 its eager seekers and its cruel crowd — a dramatic 
 scene, immensely emphasized. Somewhere else, 
 there is a boat on dark water, with strange 
 significant dredging. And below the place where 
 the sunlight Meryon painted so well, strikes on 
 the turrets of the Pont Neuf, figures point with 
 eager gesture to the shadowed and blackened 
 water, and in the boat a group of three form or 
 suggest, like the willows in Childe Roland \ ‘a 
 suicidal throng.’ For no ghost would have been 
 needed to beckon Meryon to ‘more removed 
 ground,’ for such ‘impartment’ as it might 
 desire, ‘ to him alone.’ Spirits spoke to him, 
 only too well, in every street of Paris. The 
 stones were alive. And in every building of 
 beauty or age, at every dark street corner, in 
 every bridge that spanned the breadth of Seine, 
 in every aspect of wandering water or passing 
 sky, there was something to recall to him the 
 fortunes of the solitary, of the disappointed, of 
 the desperate, of the poor. His sense of these 
 
MERY ON. 
 
 33 
 
 strange fortunes — of their mystery and tragedy 
 — he has woven inseparably into the fabric of 
 his work. 
 
 Frederick Wedmore. 
 
 d 
 
NOTES FOR THE AMATEUR. 
 
 M ERYON’S etchings are more difficult to 
 classify than those of any other artist as 
 important He is not alone among great artists 
 in having done much original work which we 
 could afford to be without, but he is unlike most 
 of his fellows in having produced much that is 
 but the labour of the copyist, and he is unlike 
 most copyists in having given to some of his 
 translations a picturesque quality and artistic 
 value not existing in the designs he was engaged 
 to reproduce. 
 
 On these accounts, if we attempted, in a cata- 
 logue, to divide his work simply into original 
 work and work more or less of reproduction, we 
 should find a few of his best things in the second 
 class, and many of his worst in the first ; and 
 there would be disadvantage and confusion in 
 •this, because people give — and generally rightly 
 give — to “ original ” work an honour which they 
 withhold from that which is confessedly adapted. 
 
NOTES FOR THE AMATEUR. 
 
 35 
 
 The arrangement then — it may be suggested— 
 ought to be chronological. But a complete 
 chronological arrangement it is impossible to 
 make. The data do not exist. Moreover, such 
 arrangement, even could it be accomplished, 
 would result in embedding the artist’s very finest 
 work in the midst of his most insignificant. 
 Where, as in the case of Meryon, a line may be 
 drawn pretty sharply between good and bad, it 
 seems important to draw that line — important to 
 give to the good prominence and to give to it 
 relief. 
 
 The most natural division then, to those who 
 have studied Meryon sympathetically, comes to 
 be this, to begin with — on the one side, his art 
 work, the work by which he will live along with 
 Rembrandt and Rembrandt’s peers ; on the other 
 side his commoner work, of which some was 
 original indeed, but without significance, and 
 some the mechanical rendering of things that 
 had no interest for him. To his poverty, as well 
 as sometimes to the whims of his later years, we 
 owe the presence of so much which there is no 
 need to pause over. 
 
 I have, in the Catalogue, dealt but briefly with 
 this unimportant work. Nevertheless it is set 
 down there for the curious. In the “states” of 
 
3 6 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 it there is comparatively little variety, for the 
 plates which were not really characteristic of 
 him were not the plates which Meryon loved — 
 he did not linger over them, retouch here, and 
 obliterate there, as with the nobler plates, which 
 evidence his sense of high and tragic beauty, 
 and which record his view of Life as they record 
 Paris. The student who collects for Art’s sake is 
 occupied with the finest, with the most charac- 
 teristic ; and on these I have chiefly insisted. 
 
 There are often several states of these finer 
 prints ; partly because, as public things, they 
 passed naturally through more stages than did 
 the plates for private patrons, and partly because 
 it was a pleasure to Meryon to handle them, 
 even for purposes of the most trivial change. Of 
 these fine prints, the First States, properly so 
 called — I am not speaking of those Trial Proofs 
 which have been called First States erroneously 
 — are often not actually less numerous than the 
 later, but they are more desired. When the 
 impressions of a true First State are actually less 
 numerous it is likely they bear some mark of 
 which the artist speedily disapproved — verses, 
 say, such as those in Le Pont Nenf and Le 
 Stryge , which touched too closely on the lines of 
 the picture, and so were promptly suppressed. 
 
NOTES FOR THE AMATEUR. 
 
 37 
 
 Trial proofs are habitually rare, and they are 
 often undesirable, unless the particular object be 
 to trace the progress of the artist’s labour, rather 
 than to enjoy the fruits of it. 
 
 But if true First States of Meryori are fre- 
 quently not rarer than Second or than Third, it 
 is fine impressions that are rare. In the later 
 States they hardly occur : in the earlier they 
 occur less often than they might have done had 
 the printing been invariably skilful. But it is 
 these, and these alone, that should be sought. It 
 is to discern these that the eye should be gradu- 
 ally educated. The excellence of the impression 
 is everything. Without it the work of art hardly 
 exists. And for the excellence of the impression, 
 priority of State, though it is frequently impor- 
 tant^ gives no sufficient guarantee. 
 
 Meryon lived in the mad-house some time 
 after his prints began to be collected, and it is 
 now eleven years since he was put into his 
 grave. The commercial value of his work has 
 seen some changes. Not long before his death, 
 the whole set of his Paris etchings — not all that 
 recorded Paris, but all that formed the professed 
 series — was to be had for thirty francs. Yet 
 earlier, when he was at large and was but gradu- 
 
38 
 
 MET? YON. 
 
 ally starving, he thankfully accepted the veriest 
 trifle for a fine impression of his Abside. I have 
 seen a bill which he made out to a patron-friend 
 of those days : “To Monsieur Vasset, who has 
 done me the honour to take several of my prints, 
 the Abside , a franc and a half,” But when he 
 was locked away in Charenton, and could do 
 nothing more with sanity, appreciation began. 
 
 M. Niel, an early friend, had the first impor- 
 tant collection that was sold under the hammer. 
 Then followed M. Burty’s, M. Hirsch’s, and later, 
 M. Sensier’s. In Paris there remain about three 
 p-ood collections, of which M. de Salicis’s is the 
 best. In London — not to speak now of the cabi- 
 nets of private collectors — the British Museum is 
 rich in the prints of Mery on. 
 
 The impressions are printed on paper of many 
 sorts. A greenish tinged paper Meryon liked, 
 and it is one of the favourites of collectors. Its 
 unearthly hue adds to the weirdness of some of 
 the pictures, and sometimes suitably ; but it is not 
 always good. A thin old Dutch paper, wiry and 
 strong, white originally, and only toned by age, 
 gives some of the finest impressions. Other 
 good examples are on Japanese, and there are 
 fine ones on thinnest India paper that is of ex- 
 
NOTES FOR THE AMATEUR. 
 
 39 
 
 cellent quality. Modern Whatman and modern 
 French paper have been used for many plates ; 
 and a few impressions, which, I think, were rarely 
 printed except by Meryon himself, are found on 
 a paper of yellowish brown, on which the effect 
 is but seldom satisfactory. 
 
 As to the classification of States adopted in 
 the Catalogue, I have tried — with the approval, 
 perhaps, of those more skilled amateurs to whom 
 I owe so much — to avoid the purposeless con- 
 fusion which results from treating as a State that 
 which is but a variation of work still in progress. 
 When the plate is for the first time completed, 
 that is its “ First State.” And afterwards, each 
 change of State chronicled implies an actual 
 difference, though the presence of such difference 
 may sometimes be most intelligibly indicated, 
 not by elaborate description difficult to follow, 
 but by record of the marginal and other letter- 
 ings with which Mdryon himself expressed the 
 fact of change. 
 
 F. W. 
 
 Loudon , July, i8yg. 
 

 
CATALOGUE. 
 
 THE ART WORK OF MERYON. 
 
 (The measurements are taken in every case from plate-mark to plate-mark.) 
 
 I. 
 
 AUX FORTES SUR PARIS, par C. Miry on , , 
 
 MDCCCLII. Height 6 t 5 q, width 5. The cover for 
 the Paris set. It bears the title on a representation of 
 a slab of stone, which is doubtless symbolical of the 
 building of Old Paris. And it is here by a happy coin- 
 cidence at the head of a work in which the artist him- 
 self has built rather than drawn. 
 
 This set Meryon sought to make public together, and 
 it constituted in his mind a work. There are — besides 
 one variation — twenty-two pieces, ten of which were 
 destined as tail-pieces, or as commentaries on the 
 greater plates. Of these some few, as the descriptions 
 easily show, hold their place in the Art Work of Mdryon 
 only because they complete his thought, and so are bound 
 to be presented in the order in which he arranged them. 
 
 2. A Reinier, dit Zeeman, peintre et eau-fortier. 
 H. 7 ; w. 2 t 7 q. The Dedication. Forty-two lines of verse 
 
42 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 to the artist — “painter of sailors,”— one of whose plates 
 had helped to inspire Mery on with the love of the 
 architecture of cities. M£ryon desires to connect with 
 Zeeman’s name the work in which he has “ engraved 
 Paris.” 
 
 There are very few impressions. 
 
 3. Old Gate of the Palais de Justice . 1 H. 3! ; w. 
 3j%. The Palais faces us, its round towers flanking the 
 gate. 
 
 First State. Before all letters. 
 
 Second State. With “ Paris. C. Meryon f. it. 
 MDCCCLIV. Imp. rue N. S. Etienne-du-Mont, 
 26.” 
 
 This plate and the To?nbeau de Moliere were engraved 
 on the same copper, which was then very promptly 
 divided. 
 
 4. “ Qu’ ame pure Gemisse .” H. 2-^ ; w. i-^. Verses 
 beginning thus, and bewailing the life of Paris. 
 
 Some impressions have “ rougisse” for “gemisse.” 
 
 5. Arms of Paris. H. 5-^ ; w. 4-^. A symbolical 
 design, in which a galley, full sail, makes for the right. 
 
 1 I have kept the French titles only when they are of Meryon’s giving. 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 
 
 43 
 
 There are trial proofs before all letters. The pub- 
 lished state has Mdryon’s name, date, and address. 
 
 6. “ Fluctuat nec Mergitur.” H. 6-j^ ; w. 6-^. So 
 called from the inscription upon a band in the design, 
 which is a variation of the first Arms of Paris, and has 
 the galley sailing towards the spectator. 
 
 In this rare print the oars are lifted : in Mr. Seymour 
 Haden's completed pen drawing they are drooped. 
 
 y. Le Stryge. H. 6 t 8 ^ ; w. 5-^. The horned and winged 
 demon of stone, at an angle on the heights of Notre 
 Dame, surveys, with head on hands, the city : the tower 
 of St. Jacques in middle distance, and the hill rising 
 towards Montmartre. 
 
 There are trial proofs, rarely good, with “ C. M.” on 
 chimney just inside the oval ; no letters outside ; and 
 the plate a little larger than in the first state. 
 
 First State. Plate slightly reduced. There is added 
 “ C. Mdryon del. sculp,” with “ MDCCCLIII,” re- 
 versed, in left corner, and in the right “ A. Delatre, 
 imp., Rue de la Boucherie, 6,” and the lines 
 
 “ Insatiable Vampire, l'etemelle Luxure 
 Sur la Grande Cite convoite sa pature.” 
 
 Very few impressions. 
 
 Second State. The plate again very slightly reduced 
 
44 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 to the measurements given, and the lines of verse 
 are removed. 
 
 The earliest impressions, generally with the edge 
 of the plate dirty, are as fine as in the first state. 
 
 Third State. Other letters except the “ C. M.” inside 
 oval are erased, and “ Le Stryge” is added as title. 
 
 Fourth State. Just below the oval, in the smallest 
 capitals, is added the printer’s new address, “ A. 
 Delatre. Imp. R. St. Jacques, 265,” and the number 
 “ 1 ” is added near the “ C. M.” inside the oval. 1 
 
 Mr. Stopford Brooke sends me a “ brouillon” 
 from M. Jules Andrieu, which I translate. “In 
 the winter of 1861-62,” says M. Andrieu, “ Madame 
 Max Valrey introduced me to Mdryon. Taking 
 up the etching which did not then bear the name 
 of The Stryge , Mdryon said to me, ‘ You can’t tell 
 why my comrades, who know their work better 
 than I do, fail with the Tower of St. Jacques? It 
 is because the modern square is the principal thing 
 for them, and the Middle Age tower an accident. 
 But if they saw, as I see, an enemy behind each 
 battlement and arms through each loophole ; if 
 they expected, as I do, to have the boiling oil and the 
 molten lead poured down on them, they would do 
 far finer things than I can do. For often I have to 
 patch my plate so much that I ought indeed to be a 
 
 1 In this way Meryon numbered in their last regular tirage, and always 
 inside the line of the picture, the twelve principal pieces of his set of Paris, 
 of which twelve this is the first. 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 
 
 45 
 
 tinker. My comrades/ added he, striking the 
 Stryge , 1 my comrades are sensible fellows. They 
 are never haunted by this monster.’ ‘ What mon- 
 ster?’ I asked, and seeing a reproachful look, I 
 corrected myself , 1 or rather, what does this monster 
 mean ?’ ‘ The monster is mine and that of the men 
 who built this Tower of St. Jacques. He means 
 stupidity, cruelty, lust, hypocrisy, --they have all 
 met in that one beast.’ ” 
 
 8. Le Petit Pont. H. io^; w. 7-^. The view is 
 taken from the towing-path just above the level of the 
 water. The bridge, of three arches, is in front. Tall 
 houses, beginning at the left, recede into the distance, 
 and above them rise the towers of Notre Dame. 
 
 First State. Before the “ C. M.” in the upper right- 
 hand corner. 
 
 Second State. With “ C. M.” in the corner, but before 
 any other letters. 
 
 Third State. With a title written : “ Le Petit Pont,” 
 and “ publie par l’artiste” in the left lower corner, 
 and “ A. Delatre, Rue St. Jacques, 17 1,” in the right. 
 
 Fourth State. With cross lines in the sky, slanting 
 from the right upper corner of it. 
 
 Fifth State. With “ Le Petit Pont” now in small 
 capitals, and “ 1850” and the number “2.” 
 
 The composition is but ill-balanced. 
 
46 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 9. L’Arche du Pont Notre Dame. H. 6; w. 7^,. 
 The view is taken almost from the water’s level, and 
 consists chiefly of the arch of the bridge. A tall woman 
 of graceful figure stands in a boat. A workman is slung 
 in a rope to work at the masonry. Through the arch is 
 seen the woodwork that supported the old Pompe, and 
 a bridge and towers are beyond. 
 
 There are rare, but ineffective, trial proofs of pure 
 etching. 
 
 First State. With “ C. Mdryon, del. sculp., Imp. rue 
 N e St. Etienne du Mont, 26” in the left corner, 
 and “ Paris : 1853” in the right. 
 
 The plate is well represented only by fine impres- 
 sions of this state. 
 
 Second State . With “ C. M.” in the upper corner, 
 and with the title; the earlier inscription being 
 removed. 
 
 Third State. With the addition “ A. Delatre, Imp. 
 St. Jacques, 265,” and the number “ 3.” 
 
 10. La Galerie de Notre Dame. H. ii-^ ; w . 7. A 
 view from inside the tower, looking through the pointed 
 arches out upon the city. Ravens have lodged inside 
 the arches, and flutter in the air beyond. 
 
 First State. In the left corner “ C. Mdryon del. sculp., 
 1853,” and, in the right, “ Imp. Rue N e St. Etienne- 
 du-Mont, 26.” 
 
 The only fine impressions are in this state ; th( 
 
ART WORK OF MERY ON . 47 
 
 shadows should then be dark, but not impenetrable, 
 and the sun-lighted stones very brilliant. 
 
 Second State. With monogram in left upper corner. 
 The words at bottom are erased, and the title “ La 
 Galerie N. D.” substituted. There are also added, 
 between the two last narrow columns towards the 
 right, five birds, very small. 
 
 Third State. With “A. Delatre, R. St. Jacques, 
 265,” in the right corner, and with the number “ 4.” 
 Such a view is described by Victor Hugo in 
 Notre Dame de Paris. 
 
 11. La Rue des Mauvais Garcons. H. 5 ; w. 3-^. A 
 Middle Age house, forbidding of aspect, with its big 
 number, 12, over the narrow door and barred windows. 
 Rain-water pipes, protected by great stones, at the level 
 of the street. Two women, seen from behind, pass along 
 the pavement. 
 
 First State. Before the verses beginning 
 
 “ Quel mortel habitait 
 En ce gite si sombre ?” 
 
 Second State. With the verses, and with “ Meryon, 
 imp. Rue N e St. Etienne du Mont” along the side 
 of the plate. Both states are rare. 
 
 One of the most significant of sketches, and of 
 mysterious effect. It is vignetted. I hear of a 
 copy by Lawrence. 
 
48 MERY ON. 
 
 12. La Tour de l’Horloge. H. io-^; w. 7^. The 
 Seine low in the foreground, and the Pont au Change, 
 with a barge below its arch ; but one great building, the 
 Palais de Justice, occupies the greater part of the picture. 
 Two sides of it are seen, and many towers, and M dry on 
 has drawn with a care peculiarly delicate the long six- 
 light window to the left, with its innumerable little panes, 
 of which the monotony is subtly broken. 
 
 First State. With “ C. M.” in the right upper corner, 
 and no other letters. 
 
 The best impressions are always in this state. 
 
 Second State . With the title “ La Tour de l’Hor- 
 loge,” written, and “ Publid par L ’Artiste” in the 
 left corner, and “ Imp. A. Delatre, R. St. Jacques, 
 1 7 1,” in the right 
 
 Third State. With the title printed in capitals : the 
 rest still written, but beams of light now strike 
 across the river front of the Palais de Justice. 
 
 Fourth State. The inscription identifying the print 
 with the publication E Artiste has now disappeared. 
 The monogram of Mdryon replaces the “ C. M.,” 
 and the number “5” is added. The printer’s 
 address is in the smallest capitals below the title. 
 There are further changes in the plate, such as the 
 disappearance of a little round tower which until 
 now has been in the background. 
 
 The late changes in the plate were unsuccessful 
 experiments, and especially the beams of light 
 which long after the work was finished, Mdryon, in 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 
 
 49 
 
 the mental activity of nervousness, deemed to be 
 necessary for the river-front of the building, 
 “ hitherto devoid of interest.” By the change he 
 did but produce a sensational effect, spoiling the 
 dignity of the picture and its grave quietude. 
 
 13. Tourelle, rue de la Tix^randerie. H. 9-^ ; 
 
 w. A turret at the street corner, with neighbour- 
 
 ing houses, Gothic and modern, and a by-way in deep 
 shadow. Two men point to the turret from the street ; 
 a horseman rides by, and a woman stands in an open 
 doorway. About the house with the- turret there is the 
 free foliage of the vine. 
 
 First State, With “ C. M.” in the right upper 
 ' corner. 
 
 Weak impressions, even in this state, are not 
 rare, but only the rich have value. 
 
 Second State. With the addition of the title, 
 “ Tourelle rue de la Tixdranderie, demolie en 
 1851,” and “A. Delatre, imp. R. St. Jacques 265,” 
 and the number “ 6.” 
 
 14. St. Etienne-du-Mont. H. 9^ ; w. 5^. The west 
 front of the church faces us in the background, and 
 before it on the left, mostly in deep shadow, is the old 
 Gothic College de Montaigu, and to the right the angle 
 of the Pantheon, with workmen engaged on its masonry. 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 Dark figures pass small in the narrow street between 
 the tall lines of the buildings. 
 
 The Rev. J. J. Heywood has a trial proof, pure 
 etching, probably unique, in which the plate is 
 about an inch and a half broader and longer than 
 the measured plate. There is also a trial proof 
 before “ C. M.” in the upper corner, but with the 
 plate already reduced. 
 
 First State. With “ C. M.” in the right upper corner. 
 The arms of the workman on the lowest planks of 
 the scaffolding are raised high and near together. 
 
 Further work has now, in the best impression, 
 given softness to what was brilliant already. 
 
 Second State. The arms and head of the workman 
 on the lowest planks of the scaffold are blurred and 
 nearly obliterated. 
 
 Third State. The arms, though partially upheld, are 
 now wide apart, and well away from the head and 
 face. 
 
 Fourth State. On the topmost stones of the Pan- 
 theon — the building to the right — there is printed, 
 “ St. Etienne du Mont et Pancienne Bibliotheque 
 Ste. Genevieve,” and these topmost stones are 
 shaded with diagonal lines instead of perpendi- 
 cular. 
 
 Fifth State. At the top of the Pantheon there is 
 now printed, “ St. Etienne du Mont et Pancien 
 College de Montaigu.” On one of the posters on 
 the College wall there may be read : “ A. Delatre, 
 
ART WORK OF MERY ON. 
 
 5i 
 
 imprimeur : taille douce : eau forte, Rue St Jacques, 
 265.” The plate now bears the number “ 7.” 
 
 The plate has been coarsely copied — larger than 
 the measurements given — with no “C. M.” in the 
 corner, and with “ Delatre, C ie du Maine ” on a 
 poster. 
 
 15. La Pompe Notre Dame. H. 6^; w. 10. The 
 engine-house, with tower, supported on innumerable 
 woodwork, at the foot of which the water flows and 
 little river-boats pass. In middle distance, the houses 
 of the quay, and behind them the towers of Notre 
 Dame. 
 
 There are rare but ineffectively printed trial proofs 
 before any letters, and also with letters written dif- 
 ferently from the inscription of the first state. 
 
 First State. With “ C. Mery on, f r Imp. R. N e St. 
 Etienne du Mont, 26 ” in the left corner, and “ 1852” 
 in the right. 
 
 Second State. With “ Publie par l’Artiste ” written 
 under the left comer. A written title is added, 
 “ La Pompe Notre Dame,” and “ Imp: A. Delatre 
 R. St. Jacques, 176” under the “1852.” 
 
 Third State. “ C. Meryon D. S.” added in upper 
 right comer, and the title is now printed in capi- 
 tals, 'with the “1852” under it : Delatre’s address 
 alone occupying the comer. All reference to l' Ar- 
 tiste removed. 
 
52 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 Fourth State . “ C. M.” instead of the “ C. Meryon, 
 D S.” 
 
 Mr. Heywood has a drawing which shows that 
 the view was first meant to have been taken or seen 
 from under an arch in the foreground. 
 
 1 6. LA Petite Pompe. H. 4 ^ ; w. 3^. A little design 
 as of graceful cordage — idealized water-pipes — springing 
 from the here dainty Pompe in miniature at bottom, 
 and surrounding lines of verse which tell the building 
 fated to destruction, that “ il faut mourir.” 
 
 Trial proofs have no signature nor address, nor any 
 shading between the pipes that enclose the “ P.” and 
 “ N. D.” 
 
 The only issued state has Meryon’ s name and address, 
 and is very rare. 
 
 17. Le Pont Neuf. H. 7^ ; w. 7 T %. The three last 
 arches of the Pont Neuf : the piers of the Bridge still 
 topped with turret-like buildings used as shops. There 
 is a dark arch and timber-work at right angles with the 
 Bridge ; houses to the left ; and to the right the chim- 
 ney of the Mint. 
 
 Trial proof before burin work. Thin. 
 
 First State . With the lines of verse : — 
 
 - 
 
 “ Ci-git du vieux Pont Neuf 
 L’exacte resemblance,” &c. 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 
 
 53 
 
 and with “ C. Meryon del. sculp. 1853” in the left 
 corner, and u Imp. A. Delatre, rue de la Boucherie 
 N« 6.” 
 
 Second State . The lines of verse alone removed. In 
 this state are most of the finest impressions ; and 
 some thin ones. 
 
 Third State. The inscriptions in the corners are now 
 removed and the title is introduced in light tall 
 capitals, “Le Pont Neuf.” The tall chimney of 
 the Mint has disappeared, and the houses on the 
 further side of the street beyond the Bridge are 
 greatly lowered. 
 
 Fourth State. The title is now in very small capitals, 
 followed by the date “ 1850,” and “A. Delatre Imp. 
 R. St. Jacques, 265,” and the initials “C. M.” are 
 in an upper corner and the figure “9” in the left 
 corner. 
 
 18. Le Pont au Change. H. 6 t % ; w. 13^. The long 
 Bridge crosses the picture from the left, to the Palais de 
 Justice on the right. Near it is moored a little wooden 
 bath-house or lavoir , and behind it rises small in the 
 distance the tower of the Pompe. The broad water of 
 the foreground is alive with ripple and the movements 
 of boats and men. 
 
 There are rare trial proofs in various stages of com- 
 pletion. Mr. Heywood has one without any distance or 
 
54 
 
 MERY ON. 
 
 sky. There are others, thin, before much added work, 
 which gives colour to the plate. 
 
 First State. With “C. Mdryon del. sculp, mdcccliiii” 
 in left corner, and “ Imp. R. Neuve St. Etienne du 
 Mont” in the right. 
 
 Second State. The balloon Speranza has disappeared, 
 and there is a crescent moon and many birds of 
 prey. The title is given, “Le Pont au Change,” 
 and there is a monogram in the left upper corner. 
 
 Third State. With the objects in the sky again al- 
 tered : there are several small balloons, and the 
 plate bears the number “ io.” 
 
 Fourth State. With “Vasco de Gama” on a balloon, 
 and other names on others. 
 
 These later states are not common, but their 
 impressions are never very fine. 
 
 19. L’Esperance. H. 2 t %; w. 5. Lines of verse written 
 to accompany the Pont au Change. They begin “ Ldger 
 aerostat, o divine esp^rance.” 
 
 20. La Morgue. H. 9^; w. 8-^. The old Morgue of 
 Meryon’s day, as seen from the qu^y-side. Wash-houses 
 low in the foreground. Behind and above the Morgue, 
 a background of tall houses. In the front a body borne 
 to the dead house : the scene witnessed by alarmed 
 women and a curious crowd. 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 
 
 55 
 
 There appear to be one or two trial proofs, unfinished. 
 
 First State . Before any letters. Very rare. 
 
 Second State . With “C. M^ryon, del. sculp. MDCCCLiv” 
 in the left corner and “Imp. Rue Neuve St. Etienne 
 du Mont N° 26” in the right. 
 
 Early impressions — rich and brilliant — of this 
 state are equal to the first, and are rare. 
 
 Third State. The previous letters removed, and the 
 title added, “La Morgue : 1850,” and “ Sabra, den- 
 tiste du peuple” added on a house over the Morgue 
 itself, and “ Hotel des Trois Balances Meuble ” on 
 anothei house, and the monogram in the left upper 
 corner. 
 
 Fourth State. To the same title is added “A. Delatre, 
 imp. R. St. Jacques, 265,” and the number “ n.” 
 
 Fifth State. “ Imagerie religieuse : exportation” is on 
 another house. 
 
 Of the Morgue and of the Abside Mr. Haden 
 excellently writes, “ F rom both these it may be in- 
 ferred that his work was not impulsive and spon- 
 taneous, like etchers’ work in general ; but reflective 
 and constructive, slow and laborious. . . . His me- 
 thod was this — he made not a sketch, but a number 
 of sketches, two or three inches square, of parts of 
 his picture, which he then put together and arranged 
 into an harmonious whole, which whole he first bit 
 in and then worked into completeness with the dry 
 point. What is singular, and a proof of his concen- 
 trativeness, is that the result has none of the arti- 
 
56 
 
 ME R YON. . 
 
 ficial character usual to this kind of treatment, but 
 that it is always broad and simple, and that the 
 poetical motive is never lost sight of.” 
 
 21. L’Hotellerie de la Mort. H. 4^ ; w. i^. Ontwo 
 separate plates, printed generally on the same paper, 
 but in two colours, is a set of melancholy verses to ac- 
 company the Morgue. They invite passers-by to enter, 
 declaring that here the town of Paris, to its poor 
 children, “ en mere charitable,” 
 
 “ Donne en tout temps gratis 
 Et le lit et la table.” 
 
 22. L’Abside de Notre-Dame de Paris. H. 6^; 
 W. iij^. The Church of Notre Dame and its neigh- 
 bourhood seen from behind ; the apse being nearest us. 
 Waste ground in the foreground, with a waggon and 
 horses. Boats by the water’s edge. And the Church 
 seen over the river. To the left, over the houses of the 
 town, a flight of birds in the great rolling sky. 
 
 One or two curious trial proofs. Mr. Hey wood’s — 
 probably the earliest existing — shows nearly half the 
 plate blank. 
 
 First State. Before any letters, but the sky, which 
 was wrought last, just finished. 
 
 Of extreme rarity. 
 
 Second State. With “ C. Meryon, del. sculp. 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 57 
 
 MD.CCCLiv” in the left corner, and “Imp. Rue 
 Neuve St. Etienne du Mont, 26” in the right. 
 
 Brilliant and rich impressions of this state, on 
 thinnish wiry paper — old Dutch — represent the plate 
 admirably. The thick paper impressions are inferior. 
 
 Third State. With the date alone removed in pre- 
 paration for the altered one of the next state. And 
 a harder definiteness (through fresh work) in all 
 the little roofs and chimneys of the background to 
 the right. 
 
 Fourth State . The remainder of the previous inscrip- 
 tions removed, and the title inserted, “ L’Abside de 
 Notre Dame de Paris, 1853,” and “A. Delatre, Imp. 
 R. St. Jacques, 265.” 
 
 Fifth State. With the addition of “ C. M dry on, del. 
 sculp.” within left upper corner, and of the number 
 “ 12.” These two last states retain little tone and 
 atmosphere. 
 
 This is accounted the masterpiece of Meryon, by 
 right of its solemn and austere beauty. On two 
 very early impressions — one belonging to Mr. 
 Richard Fisher — there are written in M dry on’s 
 hand, verses (slightly varied) to accompany the 
 Abside. The following is the amended version : 
 the best of the two which Mr. Fisher sends me : — 
 
 “O toi degustateur de tout morceau gothique 
 Vois ici de Paris la noble basilique. 
 
 Nos Rois, grands et devots, ont voulu la batir 
 Pour temoigner au Maitre un profond repentir. 
 
 Quoique bien grand, helas ! on la dit trop petite 
 De nos moindres pecheurs pour contenir I’elite.” 
 
ME R YON. 
 
 58 
 
 23. Le Tombeau de Moliere. H. 2-E ; w. 2 -^. A 
 fancy composition ; a crown of laurels surrounding the 
 tomb of Moliere. 
 
 The published state has Meryon’s name and date and 
 address. (See No. 3.) 
 
 24. Tourelle, dite de Marat. H. 8-^ ; w. 5^. The 
 corner turret of the Rue de l’Ecole de Medecine — the 
 house in which Marat was assassinated. The house oppo- 
 site is seen, and the junction of the streets. In the sky, 
 in proofs and the first state, there is a symbolical repre- 
 sentation of Truth, Justice, and oppressed Innocence. 
 
 There is distributed among different collections a small 
 succession of trial proofs, with “ May” and “June” in 
 pencil in the margin, before the sky around the sym- 
 bolical figures, or, later, with the sky around the sym- 
 bolical figures, but before the words “ Fiat Lux” in the 
 open book, or, latest, with “ Fiat Lux.” They are 
 generally on fine India paper. 
 
 First State. With the title “Tourelle, dite de 
 Marat,” and the legend, “ Sainte inviolable V^ritd : 
 divin flambeau de l’ame, quand le chaos est sur 
 la terre tu descends des cieux pour dclairer les 
 hommes et r£gler les ddcrets de la stricte justice,” 
 and “ Imp. Pierron, R. Montfaucon, Paris.” 
 
 Second State. For the legend and previous title is 
 substituted “ Tourelle, Rue de l’Ecole de Medecine, 
 22 Paris,” and the symbolical figures have gone. 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 
 
 59 
 
 In Mr. Haden’s impression Mdryon has drawn 
 in pencil the head of Charlotte Corday where the 
 figures were. 
 
 Third State. Slight rays now cross the sky. Where 
 the figures were there are two small dark birds, and 
 to the last title is added “ M.D.CCCLXI ” 
 
 Fourth State. There is added “ Gazette des Beaux 
 Arts.” Tirage of the Gazette. 
 
 It must not be thought that because Mdryon 
 was more than once insane, the symbolical 
 figures in the trial proofs and in the first state 
 could not be the work of reason or sanity. Doubt- 
 less the printer looked at them disapprovingly, and 
 so got Meryon to remove them. To him they were 
 no part of the “ view ” presented daily to his eyes, 
 and he had not to consider the place of fine imagi- 
 nation in Art. 
 
 25. Rue des Chantres. H. i i t 8 ^ ; w. 5-^. Tall houses 
 rise on each side of the very narrow and shadowed 
 street. Weird figures throng the foreground. At the 
 street’s end, a white house and the spire of the Sainte 
 Chapelle. 
 
 The Museum has a trial proof before the bells and 
 the sky. 
 
 First State. Before the title. Rare. 
 
 Second State. With the title, “ Rue des Chantres, 
 Paris, MDCCCLXII” and “ Chez Rochoux, Quai 
 
6o 
 
 MERYON. 
 
 de PHorloge. Pierron, Imp. 2 ; Montfaucon 1.” 
 Early impressions are as good as in the first 
 state. 
 
 26. Ministere de la Marine. H. 6 t %- ; w. The 
 building indicated on the title is seen from the side. 
 Wild creatures in the sky. 
 
 First State. Before either monogram or title. Very 
 rare. 
 
 Second State. With monogram only. Rare. 
 
 Third State. With monogram and title. 
 
 Fourth State. With “ Fictions et Vceux” added to 
 title, and the address of Cadart and Luquet. The 
 tirage of the French Etching Club. 
 
 27. Bain Froid Chevrier. H. 5 ; w. 6 t 8 q. ChevriePs 
 Bath-house to the right of the Bridge. 
 
 Trial proofs before the sky, and with the sky, but 
 before the letters on the advertising board over the 
 Bath-house, are in the British Museum and in Mr. 
 Haden’s collection and elsewhere. 
 
 First State. With “Bain Froid Chevrier” on the 
 board abqve Bath-house. Before title. Rare. 
 
 Second State. With title, “ Bain Froid Chevrier, dit 
 de TEcole. Paris, MDCCCLXIV,” and “Pierron 
 Imp. Paris,” and the monogram at top. 
 
 Some impressions are printed together with those 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 61 
 
 of a separate plate — a tablet of verses in which 
 M&yon declares the law of equality : — 
 
 “ Qui lie le serviteur au Maitre 
 Et le sujet au Roi 
 
 C’est qu’il faut en tout temps sagement nous soumettre 
 Au dur, au rigour eux^rf^supreme bain froicL” 
 
 28. Le Pont-au-Change vers 1784. H. 5^ ; w. 9^. 
 The long and dark quay wall to the right carries the 
 eye to a line of irregular houses on a distant bridge, be- 
 yond a space of the river. A wooden mill on a broad 
 boat moored on the water. To the left a distant quay, 
 in sunlight ; houses on it, and over their tall roofs is 
 seen the Tower of St. Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. 
 
 Very rare and brilliant proofs before the great dark 
 rope was added across the picture. 
 
 First State. , With the great dark rope, but before 
 letters. Rare. 
 
 Second State. With “ C. Mdryon, Sculp, indeed. 
 d’apr£s un dessin de Nicolle tire du cabinet de 
 M. Destailleur, architecte. Imp. A. Delatre, faub. 
 St. Jacques, No. 81,” and the title. 
 
 Nearly all impressions are in rich brown ink. 
 
 The great thick rope of the two published states 
 is out of keeping with the delicate previous work, 
 which in the early proofs is so fine and subtle. 
 
62 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 29. Le Pont Neuf et la Samaritaine de dessous 
 
 LA PREMIERE ARCHE DU PONT-AU- CHANGE. H. 
 
 ; w. 8. High in the foreground the arch of the 
 Pont-au-Change filling the upper part of the picture. 
 Through it is seen the sunny quay to the right, and in 
 front the Samaritaine, with its belfry, and the Pont 
 Neuf with sunshine striking across its turrets. 
 
 Very rare and brilliant proofs before any letters, and 
 before some work round the head of the man fishing 
 in the foreground. 
 
 The published state has “ C. Meryon sculp, d’apres 
 un dessin de Nicolle, tird du cabinet de Monsieur 
 Destailleur, architecte. Imp. A. Delatre, Rue faub. St. 
 Jacques 81,” and the title. 
 
 Like No. 28, generally printed in rich brown ink, and 
 after the earliest impressions apt to be heavy. 
 
 30. Rue Pirouette. H. 5 ; w. 4-^. a place where streets 
 meet, and tall houses, old and new, cluster together- 
 Shops to the left. Many figures, of gossips pausing and 
 busy people pursuing affairs. 
 
 First State. Before “C. M. et L” jotted on the 
 chimney by the chief gabled house, and before any 
 title. Rare. 
 
 Second State. With “C. M. et L ” on the chimney, 
 and with the title “Rue Pirouette, i860.” 
 
 Third State. With the addition of “ M dry on 
 sculp.,” in left corner, and “ Laurence del ” in 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 63 
 
 right, and also to the right “Delatre, Imp., R. S. J. 
 265.” 
 
 Fourth State. The title has now become “ Rue 
 Pirouette aux Halles, i860;” “Delatre,” etc., 
 moved under it, and the positions of Laurence 
 and M dry on are reversed. “ C. M. et L ” has gone 
 from the chimney. 
 
 Fifth State. The top affiches on the house-wall 
 entirely changed to “ Aux noces de Gamache — 
 Sacoche,” etc. 
 
 31. Partie de la Cit£ de Paris, vers la fin du 
 XVI I me Siecle. H. 6 ; w. I2 t ^. Behind a thin line of 
 water in the immediate foreground there stretches a 
 long row of timbered houses of the Middle Age, with 
 many details of their architecture delicately traced. 
 Other gabled houses to the left, and an arch in deep 
 shadow. 
 
 Trial proofs before the sky and before the towers and 
 before much strengthening of the work. 
 
 First State . On the advertising board aloft to the 
 right, the inscription “ Au Cana, C. Mdryon, Res- 
 taura., Paris, An de Gra. MDCCCLXI .” 
 
 Second State. “ Au Cana ” alone is removed. 
 
 Third State. The rest of the previous inscription on 
 the board is removed, and we read instead of it, 
 “Au Repu. Le Sobre resta. Poissons fr.” The 
 
6 4 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 title is added, and a legend beginning with the 
 statement that in all probability the south front 
 of the present houses inhabited by Tanners formed 
 a side of the Rue de la Pelleterie. There is also 
 the name and address of Rochoux, a printseller, and 
 of Delatre. 
 
 32. Entree du Convent des Capucins Francais a 
 Athenes. H. 7 t % ; w. 5. The preserved ruin — the 
 Choragic Monument of Lysicrates — with an effect of 
 sunlight, chiefly M^ryon’s own, is to the right of the 
 picture. The gate is to the left. 
 
 First State. Before any letters. Rare. 
 
 Second State. With the title, M^ryon’s name and 
 the printer’s. 
 
 A free rendering of a drawing or engraving. It 
 was done for Count L£on de Laborde’s Athens 
 in the Fifteenth , Sixteenth , and Seventeenth Cen- 
 turies. 
 
 33. A Doorway. H. 6^; w. 4 T %. A light sketch of a 
 door, and of the carvings round it. It is doubtless, 
 like the two next numbers, a souvenir of Bourges. Rare. 
 
 34. Ancienne Habitation a Bourges. H. 9^ ; w. 5^. 
 A line of houses, chiefly wooden and overhanging, 
 recedes into the background to the right. 
 
ART WORK OF MERYON. 65 
 
 Trial proofs on larger plate before “C. M.,” and with 
 the very slightest indication of the furthest houses. 
 
 First State. With “ C. M.” within left corner. 
 Second State. With the title added. 
 
 35. La Rue des Toiles, a Bourges. H. 8 t 5 q ; w. 4^. 
 Looking down a street that goes to the left. To the 
 right, amongst the others, one white house, with the 
 line of the gable straight and sharp. 
 
 Trial proof with date on chimney, “1853,” and a dog in 
 the left foreground. Later trial proof with the addition 
 of inscription “ C. M^ryon, del sculp. 1853,” and “ Imp. 
 N e St. Etienne du Mont 26.” 
 
 First State. With the date now removed from 
 chimney. 
 
 Second State. With the dog removed. 
 
 Third State. The figures of a man and woman now 
 added in the left foreground, and the inscriptions 
 removed. The best state generally. 
 
 Fourth State. With title, “ La Rue des Toiles, 
 k Bourges.” 
 
 Fifth State. With Delatre’s address added. In this 
 worn state the plate passed to the Fine Arts 
 Quarterly Review. 
 
 It has been coarsely copied. A simple sign by 
 which the copy may be known is that it has the 
 bird against the gabled storey broad and white. 
 
 F 
 
THE MINOR WORK OF MERYON. 
 
 36. Le Pilote de Tonga. H. 8 5 w. Sto- Within a 
 little border is engraved a record in poetical prose of 
 the achievements of the pilot who came on board 
 near Tonga, and led the vessel safely to broad waters. 
 First State. With the inscription “Souvenir de 
 Voyage, MDCCCXLII-VI.” 
 
 Second State. With Delatre’s address added. 
 
 37. Le Malingre Cryptogame. H. 2^; w. 2 T V A 
 monster of the mushroom tribe. 
 
 First State. Before title. 
 
 Second State . With title. 
 
 38. A Dog’s Head. H. 2^; w. 2^. Lightly sketched. 
 
 39. Greniers indigenes et Habitations a Akaroa. 
 H. 5^; w. 9^. Natives receiving a European. 
 
 First State. Before title. 
 
 Second State. With title. 
 
MINOR WORK OF MERY ON 
 
 67 
 
 40. Grande Case indigene. H. 5 t S o; w. 9-^. Natives 
 before a Cottage. A woman and child approach the 
 group. 
 
 First State. Before title. 
 
 Second State. With title. 
 
 41. Oceanie : Peche aux Palmes. H. 6^; w. 13-^. 
 Naked natives employed as the title describes, and up 
 to their waists in the water. In the distance, the 
 steady frigate on a wide sea. 
 
 First State. Before title. 
 
 Second State. With title. 
 
 The only picturesque record of what Meryon saw 
 in foreign parts ; and even this very faulty. But it 
 has some of the sentiment of the Pilot of Tonga — 
 the sailor’s joy in free waters and the great air. 
 
 42. Nouvelle Zelande : Peche a la seine. H. 6-^ ; 
 w. 13. The scene is in a bay : around it sterile hills. 
 First State. Before title. 
 
 Second State. With title. 
 
 43. Nouvelle Zelande : Etat de la petite colonie 
 FRAN9AISE d’Akaroa. H. 4/0 ; w. 6-5^. Cottages by 
 the water. 
 
68 
 
 MERYON. 
 
 44. La Chaumiere du Colon. H. 3^; w. 3. A 
 gabled cottage. 
 
 First State. Before title. 
 
 Second State. With title. 
 
 45 Pro-volant des I les Mulgrave. h. 5^; w. 3^. 
 
 On one impression of this poor thing M6ryon wrote 
 that there were printed the unusual number of 150 
 copies. 
 
 46. Cover for the New Zealand Set. H. 6-l; w . 
 
 9/0. “ Voyage a la Nouvelle Zelande,” &c. 
 
 47. Rochoux’s Address Card. H. 3-^; w. 4^. Two 
 figures, symbolizing the rivers of Paris — the Seine and 
 the Marne — are reclining at the top of the design, which 
 encloses the address of one of the few printsellers who 
 cared for Meryon’s work in Meryon’s life. 
 
 First State. With a lamp under the arch at bottom. 
 
 Rare. 
 
 Second State. With a boat under the arch. 
 
 ] 
 
 48. Verses to M. Eugene Blery. H. 5 ; w. 2-^. 
 M6ryon addresses to his master Bldry, doubtless with 
 an offering of prints, these lines of his “ Muse adoies- 
 cente.” 
 
69 
 
 MINOR WORK OF ME R YON 
 
 49. Loi Lunaire. H. 6^; 9^. The law is framed in a 
 representation of strange boxes in which it seemed 
 fitting to Meryon, when he was mad, that mankind 
 should sleep upright. 
 
 50. Loi Lunaire. H. 4^; w. 3^. A variation of the 
 preceding plate. 
 
 51. Loi Solaire. H. 4^; w. 3^. A symbolical de- 
 sign, with the sun’s rays, accompanies this law. 
 
 i 
 
 52 and 53. A Scheme to facilitate the forging of 
 Bank Notes. Two pieces on a black ground, and on 
 one of which is the word “ France,” and a woman’s 
 head. 
 
 54. Allegorical Design to serve as the frame 
 
 FOR THE PORTRAIT OF A PRINTER. H. 6-^; W. 5. 
 Round a blank space, in a late state filled up with a 
 portrait, is the frame, ornamented with the “ attributes ” 
 of printing. All sorts of proofs exist, and are worth- 
 less. 
 
 55. Rebus: — “La Vendetta.” H. 3-^; w. 3. A 
 woman kneels. 
 
70 MERY ON. 
 
 56. Rebus, of which the subject is De Morny. 
 H. 6 ; w. 2 t 7 q. 
 
 57. Rebus B:£ranger. H. 12; w. 5^. A big bird, 
 a tavern-table, a fort, a key. 
 
 58. College Henri IV. ou Lyc£e Napoleon. H. 
 11^; 19^. A confusion of buildings fills the entire 
 print. 
 
 First State. With a legend only at the side, saying 
 that thirty impressions are now offered, though the 
 plate is not finished. 
 
 Second State. With a steamer introduced on high, 
 and note added, saying that there are only ten im- 
 pressions. 
 
 Third State. With Pierron, the printer’s address, 
 and the wild upper part gone and replaced by 
 houses. 
 
 Fourth State. With full title. 
 
 M. Vasset informs me that no effort could 
 induce M^ryon to remove the figures of the 
 gymnasts. And indeed they are full of significant 
 gesture* 
 
 59. Petit Prince Dito. H. 6-^; w. 5. The Prince 
 riding ; and a Ballad below. 
 
MINOR WORK OF ME R YON. 71 
 
 60. Vue de l’Ancien Louvre du Cote de la Seine. 
 
 H. 6 t 5 q; w. 10^. From a picture by Zeeman. 
 
 First State. Before title. 
 
 Second State. With title. 
 
 The commission Meryonreceived’from the French 
 Government two years before his death. 
 
 61. Frontispiece for “ L’OEuvre de Thomas de 
 Leu,” par Thomas Arnauldet. H. 6 ; w. 4^%. 
 
 -<r> 
 
 & v «4 
 
 62. The Ewe. H. 3^ ; w. 4-^. Copy from A. Van der v f 
 
 Velde ( Bartsch 14). 
 
 ^ 63. Cow AND Ass. H. 3 ; w. 5^. After De Louther- 
 bourg. 
 
 64. The Sheep and the Flies. After Karel du Jardin 
 {Bartsch 38). 
 
 This and the next two are reversed copies, and are 
 signed “ C. M. apres K. du J.” 
 
 ^ 65. The Three Swine in front of the Stable. H. 
 
 &to 5 w. Sto- After Karel du Jardin (. Bartsch 8). 
 
 66. The Two Horses. H. 6-^% ; w. 5^. After Karel 
 du Jardin (. Bartsch 4). 
 
72 
 
 MERYON. 
 
 67. A Soldier standing, and seen in profile. 
 After Salvator Rosa ( Bartsch 38). Mentioned in the 
 Gazette des Beaux- Arts, and not repudiated by Meryon. 
 I have never seen it. 
 
 68. The Pavilion of Mademoiselle, 'and a part of 
 the Louvre at Paris. H. sfo ; w . 9-^. After Zee- 
 man ( Bartsch 55). The first of a little set done by 
 Meryon after four of Zeeman’s eight Views of Paris and 
 its Neighbourhood. The set was published about 1650 
 at Amsterdam by Clement de Jonghe. 
 
 69. The Entrance to the Faubourg St. Marceau. 
 H. 5 t 3 q ; w. 9^. After Zeeman ( Bartsch 60). 
 
 70. A Water Mill by St. Denis. H. 5-^; w. 9^. 
 After Zeeman ( Bartsch 57). 
 
 71. The River Seine and the corner of the “ Mail” 
 at Paris. H. 5-^ ; w. 9 t 6 q. After Zeeman ( Bartsch 
 61). 
 
 72. The Ship of Jean de Vyl, of Rotterdam. H. 
 2-E ; w. 4 -jL After Zeeman ( Bartsch 7). 
 
MINOR WORK OF ME R YON. 
 
 73 
 
 One of a little set done by Meryon after four of 
 Zeeman’s twelve etchings known as Recueilj* de plusieurs 
 Navires et Passages, and published in Paris by J. van 
 Merlen, at the sign of the “ City of Antwerp.” 
 
 73. Haarlem Amsterdam. H. 2 - E ; w. 4-^. After 
 
 .j-T \ ' 
 
 Zeeman {Bartsrch 8). 
 
 74. From Calais to Flushing. H. 2^ ; w. 4^. After 
 Zeeman ( Bartsch 14). 
 
 75. South Sea Fishers. H. 2-E; w. 4E. After Zee- 
 man ( Bartsch 18). 
 
 These and those after Karel du Jardin were done 
 early, and the technical skill of Zeeman and Karel du 
 Jardin laid the foundation for the greater art of Meryon. 
 
 76. The Salle des Pas Perdus. H. 10-^ ; w. 17-^. 
 After Androuet Ducerceau. It represents a vaulted hall, 
 with statues and a moving crowd. The original piece, of 
 * extreme rarity, was heartily admired by Mdryon, who 
 copied it at a time (1855) when he had proved suffi- 
 ciently his power to create. He became contentedly 
 subordinate, calling attention in an inscription not only 
 
74 
 
 ME R YON. 
 
 to the “ main de maitre” shown in Ducerceau’s treat- 
 ment of architecture, but to the truth of gesture and 
 fine correctness of form. 
 
 First State . Before the address of Delatre, and with 
 the inscription. 
 
 Second State. Without the inscription, and with the 
 address of Delatre. The measured plate. 
 
 77. Chenonceau. H. 7 \ ; w. 4^. After the plate by 
 Androuet Ducerceau. 
 
 78. A Head of Christ. After Philippe de Champagne. 
 M. Burty, writing in Meryon’s lifetime, chronicled this 
 print as an early one. I have never had access to it. 
 
 79. A Plan of the Battle of Sinope. H. 7-5%; 
 w. 10^. The impressions, generally coloured, were 
 published by Tanera. 
 
 80. San Francisco. H. g \ ; w. 39. The great city, 
 seemingly barren of noble buildings, lies out across the 
 print. A foreground of unoccupied land. The la- 
 borious plate was done for a firm of bankers whose ini- 
 tials figure upon it. Mdryonwas furnished with various 
 materials. 
 
 81. Woman sketching a Ruin. H. 6 t %; w. 8 t %. From 
 a drawing by M. Viollet-le-Duc. The ruined Castle is 
 probably Pierrefonds. 
 
MINOR WORK OF ME R YON. 
 
 75 
 
 82. Louis XI. receiving a Printer. H. 6 ^% ; w. 8. 
 After a French miniature of the epoch in the Niel 
 Collection. 
 
 83. Chevet de St. Martin -sur-Renelle. H. 7 ^; 
 w. 4 t ^. After Polycles Langlois. Done as an illustra- 
 tion to the Memoir es de la Societe de Antiquaires de 
 Normandie. 
 
 There are trial proofs before the title. 
 
 84. Passerelle du Pont au Change apres lTn- 
 CENDIE DE 1621. H. t 7 q ; w. 9. From an old drawing 
 in the possession oFTStT Bonnardot. The collector's 
 stamp is imitated in the etching. 
 
 First State. Before all letters. 
 
 Second State. With the title. 
 
 85. Le Grand Chatelet a Paris. H. 9^; w. 11-^. 
 After a drawing made in 1780. The arched gate of the 
 Chatelet is in the background. In the front a crowd as 
 at a street market. The subject composes badly, and 
 is treated unintelligently. 
 
 First State. Before any letters. 
 
 Second State. With all letters. 
 
 f 
 
 86. Portrait of M. Casimir Lecomte. H. 13^ ; 
 w. io t 3 q. A seated figure, bald. Mdryon is believed to 
 have been furnished with a drawing. It is very common. 
 
76 
 
 MERY ON. 
 
 87. Evariste Boulay-Paty. H. 4^ ; w. 4^. From a 
 bronze by David d J Angers. 
 
 88. Francois Viete. H. 7 t %; w. 4^. From a con- 
 temporary engraving, and used like the next five, as an 
 illustration to a publication of Messieurs Benjamin Fil- 
 lon and Octave de Rochebrune : Poitou et Vendee. 
 
 St. . . % v ‘ 
 
 89. Pierre Nivelle, eveque de Luqon. H. 6 ^; . 
 w. 4-j%. From an old print. 
 
 90. T. Agrippa d’Aubigne. H. 4^; w. 4. From a 
 lithograph. 
 
 91. Jean Besly. H. 5JL ; w . 4^. After J. Isaac. 
 
 92. Rene de Burdigale, Sr. de Laudonniere Sablais 
 H. ; w. 4-^5. After Crispin de Pas. 7 h . * 
 
 / j fV*r**m> 
 
 93. Jacques Louis Marie Bizeul. H. 6-^ ; w. 
 
 94. Benjamin Fillon. H. 5 ; w. 4-%. An antiquary of 
 repute. 
 
 With this list of comparatively worthless portraits 
 
MINOR WORK OF MERY ON. 
 
 77 
 
 ends the minor work of Meryon, thus far recognized 
 by collectors. Certain other insignificant plates may 
 exist, but the plates for which Meryon is famous and 
 interesting have long been definitely known, and those 
 that are of serious value and of high and individual 
 quality are in the first division of the Catalogue. 
 
 There are three portraits of Meryon. 
 
 a. Bracquemond’s etched portrait of the head seen 
 in profile in a medallion. The first state has, in 
 a corner, “ B. h C. M.” The second state has the 
 plate reduced, and Mdryon has written and signed 
 with his name the lines— 
 
 “ Messire Bracquemond 
 A peint en cette image 
 Le sombre Meryon 
 Au grotesque visage.'** 
 
 In the third state the verses are removed. 
 
 b. Bracquemond’s etched portrait of Meryon 
 seated. 
 
 c. Flameng’s portrait — a iithograph--of M dry on 
 sitting up restlessly in bed. The first state is 
 before, and the second with, the title. 
 
 THE END. 
 

 CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, 
 CHANCERY LANE. 
 

83'634-08b 
 
GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 
 3 3125 00770 9385