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Show look down on Ostade today, to decry his talent as mixture of the coarse and the commonplace. But n oneambitioustoetch thefigure canafford tooverloo theworkof an artist whose influence was clearly fel by a far greater artist, Millet, and who, at his best-i plateslike the AnglersonaBridgeand theFiddleran the Boy with a Hurdy-Gurdy-is himself a maste of the economy of means and of simple, expressiv draughtsmanship After Ostade comes Bega. Critics have noted the curjous propheticresemblance of hisdecorative pattern and artificial lighting effects to Goya,whose violence extravagance, and cruelty may, on the other hand have had a remote source in that earlier etcher o Goya's own race, though long resident in Ital - L Spagnoletto, Ribera Manet tried to imitate on copper Goya's marvellou flat modelling of the figure. But though the techni cal means (a combination of aquatint with the etched line) is clear, the secret eluded him,and hisinter esting failure, Fleur Exotique, affords, if it be needed one further instance of the purely personal charac ter of the forever elusive, yet forever fascinating, ar of etching, for whichart,asforallarts, the human figure willalways constitute the main object or mean of expression Digital mage© 2005 Marriott Library University of Utah, All rights reserved |