anxa 
 
 85-B 
 
 10159 
 
 
 
'"'A 
 
A REPLY 
 
 TO A LETTER AND A PAMPHLET PUBLISHED BY 
 
 R SEYMOUR HADEN, Esq., F.R.C.S. 
 
 UNDER THE TITLE OF 
 
 ‘THE ETCHED WORK OF REMBRANDT’ 
 
 « BY THE 
 
 REV, CHARLES HENRY MIDDLETON 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE 
 BURLINGTON FINE ARTS CLUB 
 
 l^fintcD bi) 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE & CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE, LONDON 
 
 1879 
 

March 2i, 1879. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 Mr. F. Seymour Haden has thought fit to make 
 certain charges regarding myself and the volume which I 
 have lately published, a ‘ Descriptive Catalogue of the Com- 
 plete Etched Work of Rembrandt.’ I would willingly have 
 passed over his attacks upon me, but he has left me no al- 
 ternative but to notice them : the appeal to you, and the 
 offensive freedom of language he has allowed himself in the 
 Appendix to his reprinted monograph, have compelled me to 
 answer him. It was possible to regard as beneath my notice 
 the letter which he addressed to the ‘ Athenaeum,’ January 18 
 last, which he has now thought it not unbecoming to reprint ; 
 but I should be wanting in self-respect, and forgetful of what 
 is due to yourselves as members of a Club to which I have 
 the honour to belong, if I did not repudiate, and that in the 
 strongest permissible language, the injustice and untruthful- 
 ness of the accusations he has brought against me. He has 
 said, in summing up his charges, that I have ‘ appropriated ’ 
 his views and his chronological arrangement, both in my 
 papers sent to the ‘ Academy ’ and in my present work, and 
 declares that, apart from those appropriations, my publica- 
 tions are worthless (pp. 43-4). In his letter to you he implies 
 that his monograph, havingbeen ‘ adopted ’ by the Committee, 
 was exempted from my criticisms, and regards the Dedication 
 of my work to the Club as in some sort committing you to 
 its opinions. 
 
 With regard to the Dedication, I have no hesitation as to 
 the course I should pursue. I now request you formally to 
 permit me to cancel that Dedication. I do so on the ground 
 that my intention has been, entirely misunderstood. An act 
 which w^as intended as one of courteous compliment is dis- 
 torted by Mr. Haden into an attempt to shelter my criticisms 
 
4 
 
 upon his work under your aegis. This permission, I trust, you 
 will not refuse me. I only wish that with your doing this the 
 matter could have ended. 
 
 On the question of the ‘ adoption ’ by the Club of his 
 monograph, not only does he, in the preface, declare that he 
 himself is alone ‘ responsible * for its theories, and say that 
 * the utmost he can claim for it is that it may serve as a point 
 of departure for more deliberate work in other hands,’ but he 
 exercised in 1877 his right of reprinting and distributing it. 
 His essay, therefore, became public property, and open to the 
 criticisms of any writer, whether a member of the Club or 
 not ; and a gentleman who, in his own monograph, makes 
 such disparaging comments upon ^ Cataloguers ’ has no right 
 to complain if his opinions are contested. As to ‘ appropri- 
 ating ’ his ideas, I am obliged to confine myself to a simple, 
 although emphatic, denial of that statement : he has not put 
 forward a single instance in proof of his assertion. 
 
 But in the Appendix which he has now presented to you 
 he does not confine himself to objecting to your acceptance 
 of my Dedication, &c., and to accusing me of ‘ appropriating ’ 
 his arrangement and his views ; he adds an account, which I 
 can only designate as utterly untruthful, of what passed be- 
 tween himself and me in 1876-7 — of the footing on which I 
 sought admission to the Club, and was accepted as a member — 
 of the position assigned to me by you and acquiesced in by 
 myself — and of the use I made of the opportunities afforded me. 
 
 My first paper upon Rembrandt’s work was sent to the 
 ^Academy’ for acceptance on October 9, 1876. The corrected 
 proofs were forwarded in November ; but, for reasons connec- 
 ted with the management of that journal, my article did not 
 appear until December 24 (the paper will be found in my 
 Reprinted Notes, No. vi.) Af Ur this, I think on December 
 26 or 27, I had my first interview with Mr. Haden. My 
 object in desiring that interview was to ask his opinion as an 
 etcher upon certain landscapes hitherto catalogued among 
 Rembrandt’s works, which I had decided to reject. I told 
 him of my intention to publish a New Descriptive Catalogue, 
 the greater part of which was then written out, and I dis- 
 
5 
 
 closed the chronological plan of my work, adding that at least 
 a year must elapse before it went to the publisher’s ; my rea- 
 son for the delay being that I had not yet been able to dis- 
 cover the locality of certain very rare, almost unique impres- 
 sions, which I must examine before my work could be 
 complete. He told me some particulars regarding the pro- 
 posed Exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, and 
 requested me to furnish him with a copy of my chronological 
 table for their use. At our next interview, about a week 
 later, I gave him one of three copies which I had taken of 
 this table ; a second, dated January 4, 1877, is before me. 
 That table was to be shown to the Committee as my work, 
 and I expressed my willingness to give, not my ‘ abundant 
 leisure,’ but what time I could spare, towards making the 
 Exhibition a success. 
 
 Mr. Haden’s account (p. 44) of the ‘modest footing’ on 
 which I entered the Club, and of my ‘ placing myself entirely 
 under his directions,’ is purely imaginary, and is of a piece with 
 the assertion that ‘on these simple conditions ’ my ‘ first clerical 
 work was handed to me,’ ‘ the writing out of a chronological 
 list of the etchings, based upon that of Vosmaer.’ When this 
 ‘ clerical work,’ which, if of no more importance than Mr. 
 Haden now pleases to attach to it, had better have been en- 
 trusted to the house-steward or the porter, was placed in Mr. 
 Haden’s hands, I had not become a member of the Club ; and 
 all he says about my being employed to hang the prints, and 
 that then, ‘ as agreed upon,’ Mr. Haden and his colleagues 
 went in and altered them, ‘ rectifying dates that had been 
 misread,’ and ‘ relegating to their proper places . . . ,’ is 
 
 not merely a tissue of what I cannot hesitate to stigmatise as 
 wilful misstatements, but it has not even the merit of possi- 
 bility. I do not believe that, Mr. Haden of course excepted, 
 there is a single member of the Club — I am quite certain that 
 there is not one member of the Committee — who would have 
 condescended to admit a stranger on such extraordinary 
 terms. Nor, if I could have been so wanting in self-respect, 
 do I know any gentleman who would have seconded me : 
 and, which will perhaps be deemed conclusive, even by Mr. 
 
6 
 
 if 
 
 Haden, the minute-books of the Club are preserved ; and 
 from them it will be seen that I was not elected a member of 
 the Club until January 23, nor placed upon the Rembrandt 
 Sub-Committee until March 12 ! 
 
 But Mr. Haden, in his eagerness to disparage me, has 
 added statements even more contradictory. He goes on to 
 say (p. 45) : ‘Meanwhile a circumstance had occurred which 
 materially disturbed the smooth current of these proceedings. 
 Mr. Middleton, who had been a member of the Club long 
 enough to master the author’s plan in all its details, had 
 written him a letter . . . &c.,’ and, ‘ closely following 
 
 this letter, had appeared in the “Academy” a paper which 
 dearly foreshadowed his intention.’ 
 
 The date of this ‘ circumstance ’ is of some little im- 
 portance. I joined the club on January 23. On February 10 
 I was on my way to Paris ; before leaving London I had 
 seen the Editor of the ‘Academy,’ the late Dr. Appleton, and 
 arranged with him for the publication of a series of papers 
 upon Rembrandt’s work. These papers had been written 
 some time before ; they were to appear fortnightly, and were 
 to be numbered in a regular sequence. At this interview I 
 spoke of the intention to hold an Exhibition of Rembrandt’s 
 works at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, and I wrote to Mr. 
 Haden, asking in what form a notice of such Exhibition 
 might be inserted, and, believing it a matter in which he 
 would feel an interest, I told him of my intended papers. In 
 his answer, dated February 12, he says : 
 
 ‘ I have no objection to its being stated in the “Academy” that the 
 forthcoming chronological exhibition of Rembrandt’s etchings has 
 been proposed by me with a view to their better understanding and 
 classification, and the bringing to the test an opinion which I have 
 long entertained, that some of the larger plates commonly attributed 
 to him are by Elevens and others of his scholars. I should object 
 to the raising of a premature discussion by the mention of the par- 
 ticular works to which I allude ; that would create difficulty, and do 
 no good, and take the wind out of my sails, and provoke opposition; 
 and^ I should not like it to be said (as I hear has been said) that I 
 am going to “ write the Catalogue^' I am, with the co-operation of a 
 Commiltcc, going to edit it, and I will undertake to preface it by 
 
7 
 
 some remarks explanatory of the main object and intention of the 
 exhibition.’ 
 
 As I had in my papers, prepared for the ‘ Academy,’ ex- 
 pressed myself freely about some of what we will call ‘ the 
 doubtful prints,’ and although my conclusions, as a reference 
 to my ‘Notes’ and my Catalogue will show, differed very 
 considerably from those afterwards put forward by Mr. 
 Haden, yet his evident desire to have the first say, and his 
 suggestion that opposition might be provoked, as I assumed, 
 to the proposed Exhibition occasioned me some little per- 
 plexity. The proofs of my first paper reached me in Paris ; 
 but as there was nothing whatever said which could have any 
 reference to the coming Exhibition, or, as he now puts it, 
 ‘ clearly foreshadowed ’ anything at all, the paper being 
 entirely complete in itself, I, of course, returned the proofs, 
 and the article appeared February 24. On the earliest oppor- 
 tunity after my return to London I called upon Mr. Haden, 
 March 3rd. He then told me that he was authorised by the 
 Committee to see me and request me to postpone the further 
 publication of these papers ; the right to stop them was not 
 urged, nor did he venture to say one word about ‘ exposure,’ 
 and so on. The sole reason given was that contributors 
 might hesitate to send their prints if they believed that the 
 authenticity of those prints would be questioned. I answered 
 that, though pledged to the Editor, I felt bound to consider 
 the wishes of the Committee, and would go to the ‘Academy ’ 
 about it. I did so, and at my request Dr. Appleton consented 
 that the papers should be for the time withheld ; but, as I told 
 Mr. Haden, I did not give up my intention to write them, but 
 should, when his monograph was out and the Exhibition open, 
 enter the arena and join the fight. At the time when I con- 
 sented to stop my papers we had a further conversation, in 
 which he suggested the possibility of my publishing in some 
 future work, without his consent, and as my own, information 
 which I had obtained from him. I immediately protested 
 against such an insinuation, and required him to withdraw it, 
 which he did, and made a very complete apology for having 
 made it. 
 
8 
 
 ‘This much premised,’ as Mr. Haden expresses it, will 
 it be believed that the ‘smooth current of these proceed- 
 ings which were so materially disturbed ’ had not even com- 
 menced ! that not one single contribution from intended 
 exhibitors was received, much less hung in the gallery before 
 March 26, a full month after my paper was printed in the 
 ‘ Academy ’ ! What becomes of his circumstantial account of 
 my having been with them ‘long enough to master the 
 author’s plan in all its details ; ’ and what of the ‘ impro- 
 priety ’ and ‘ sinister intention ’ displayed by me at a time 
 when I was not only not ‘ engaged with other members in a 
 common work,’ but until March 19 had not even taken my 
 seat among the^n f 
 
 It is not my intention to follow Mr. Haden through all 
 his criticisms upon my work ; but will ask him, how it comes 
 that an author who is so sensitive to ‘ suppressions ’ and ‘ mis- 
 representations ’ should have ventured not only to leave out 
 passages in my book which entirely alter the sense he gives 
 to the words he quotes, but actually misstate my words ? 
 Thus I have nowhere claimed an originality of conception 
 in placing Rembrandt’s prints chronologically : I have claimed 
 that in no earlier Descriptive Catalogue has such arrangement 
 been adopted ; but I am careful to say that ‘ the idea is not 
 a new one, that Vosmaer in 1867 pointed out the way, and 
 at the end of his book has given a carefully arranged table, 
 not of the etchings alone, but also of the paintings and draw- 
 ings attributed to the master.’ I might have added that 
 M. Charles Blanc had discussed the idea in a passage which 
 Mr. Haden himself has printed in a ‘ Postscriptum ’ to his 
 monograph. Again, in speaking of the later state known to 
 us as ‘ the altered plate ’ of the ‘ Three Crosses,’ I do not say 
 that the great and laborious dry-point work was "probably 
 nothing more than a study for some more important work on 
 canvasl What I did say (p. 230-1) was that, ‘whether Rem- 
 brandt when he designed the scene intended that a large part 
 of it should remain a vigorous, but unfinished, sketch can 
 only be a matter of conjecture ; it may have been that he 
 rapidly outlined many of the figures, proposing to rework 
 
9 
 
 them when he saw what would be the effect of the composi- 
 tion as a whole, or^ which is not impossihlcy he entertained the 
 idea of using this for a study for some still more important 
 work upon canvas ’ — an entirely different thing. 
 
 Whether the preference I give to the earlier impressions 
 over those which were taken from the plate after it was much 
 worn and had been reworked is a preference ‘ altogether so 
 extraordinary ’ I must leave to my critics, who, I hope, will 
 not decide without comparing them. I have criticised Mr. 
 Haden’s opinions, but I am surprised that he should complain, 
 since I find he has in his reprint taken advantage of what I 
 have said, and while modifying his opinions as to absolute 
 identity of pupil work (see Note to his reprint), has corrected 
 mistakes in his first edition to which I have directed attention : 
 thus he has altered the passages in which he points .to the 
 ‘ pupils ’ of Rembrandt, among whom he had placed Martin 
 van Heemskirk and Beham and Herkmans, an author, who 
 never etched a line, and whose name he now omits. 
 
 But in pages 48-9 Mr. Haden brings forward a charge 
 regarding what I have said upon the ‘Ecce Homo:’ the 
 charge is apparently, but only apparently, a serious one ; and 
 in disproof of my assertion that * Mr. Carpenter, late Keeper 
 of the Prints in the British Museum, kindly directed my atten- 
 tion many years ago to those details which he believed 
 were by a different hand,’ he quotes, in extenso^ a letter from 
 Mr. Reid. I must own that I have read Mr. Reid’s letter with 
 some surprise ; until I read it I never entertained a doubt that 
 when Mr. Carpenter pointed out certain details in the Museum 
 impressions of the ‘ Ecce Homo ’-^the large blotches upon 
 parts of the ist state: the harsh work which in later states 
 appears in the background, the heads in the lower left, &c. — 
 he expressed an opinion that it was not all by Rembrandt. 
 Mr. Reid says that I am mistaken. It is quite possible that I 
 may be : the conversation took place some twenty years ago ; 
 the earliest state of the ‘ Ecce Homo ’ was then new to me ; 
 and, although I listened to Mr. Carpenter’s remarks with 
 great interest, it would seem that I attached a wrong mean- 
 ing to his criticisms ; — but this does not affect the fact that I 
 
lO 
 
 long ago believed that there was evidence of extraneous work 
 upon the plate. I have by me a drawing taken before I ever 
 saw Mr. Haden of the peculiar 27td state, first described in 
 my Catalogue, of which a repetition is given in one of my 
 plates, and which clearly shows evidence of another hand. 
 This 2nd state is extremely rare ; I now only know of five 
 impressions. But it seems rather an absurdity to argue the 
 point. Rembrandt’s etchings are tolerably well known to 
 many besides Mr. Haden. Does he suppose that the 
 existence of certain marked discrepancies in the work upon 
 a plate should have been entirely overlooked by every one 
 until he pointed it out ? overlooked not by careless observers, 
 but by students who have devoted, not hours, but as occasion 
 offered, months and years to the examination of these prints ; 
 that no idea of accounting for these discrepancies should ever 
 have occurred to them, and all the while the fact is so 
 thoroughly established that other artists, of eminence in their 
 several lines, were accustomed frequently to entrust parts of 
 their work to another } He will ask me how it came that, 
 having known all this, I did not rush into print and proclaim 
 what I had learnt? Simply because I did not think, nor 
 do I now, that there was anything very wonderful in the 
 discovery. 
 
 I do not deprecate any amount of fair criticism — for that I 
 am prepared. Mr. Haden may condemn my book as he 
 pleases, and I shall not complain : the language he uses, and 
 his charges against myself, are another matter. As to these, I 
 beg to assure him that I had rather be the subject of his 
 attack than have been the author of a letter such as that 
 sent to the ‘Athenaeum,’ or have made charges against another 
 which display the spirit and are couched in the words which 
 he has used in his reprint. 
 
 I am, Gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 CHARLES HENRY MIDDLETON. 
 
 T/ie Committee of 
 
 The Burlington Fine Arts Club. 
 
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