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ALS IK KAN: NOTES: REVIEWS
ing the whole world kin by new bonds,
the strong bonds of reciprocated respect,
the respect for the freedom of man, for
the sake of freedom."
NOTES
S oFAR this season the most inter-
      esting  exhibitions at the  New
      York Art Galleries have been the
unusually important collections of etch-
ings. At Frederick Keppel & Co., a not-
able collection of etchings by Sir Seymour
Haden, president of the Royal Society of
Painter-Etchers of London, has been fol-
lowed without intermission by a still more
important and significant selection from
Rembrandt's etchings.
  William Schaus opened up his new Art
Gallery, on Fifth Avenue, near the new
Bryant Library, with a room full of etch-
ings and engravings by and after the
works of J. L. E. Meissonier. And lower
down the avenue at the Wunderlich Gal-
leries is shown an interesting lot of etch-
ings by Whistler.
  Although Seymour Haden's etchings
are familiar to all art loving Americans,
probably no exhibit of his work in this
country has at one time ever before
shown so many valuable and rare speci-
mens of his work. In addition to the
etchings there are a number of Haden's
later mezzotints, which are absolutely
new to collectors both here and in Eu-
rope. Titles of a few of Haden's etch-
ings will give one some impression of
their rare quality of fresh country atmos-
phere and a sense of the artist's love of
simple things-the simple things that be-
come great art by his presentation; for
example, "The    Thames    Fisherman,"
386
"Early Morning, Richmond Park," "The
Mill Pond," "E rith Marshes," and "The
Village Ford."   Among the mezzotints
note again, "Evening Fishing," "Moor-
land Stream," and "The Pool on the
Spey." It is not likely that so complete
and rare a collection of Sir Seymour
Haden's work will soon again be pre-
sented in New York, if indeed ever.
  The Rembrandt etchings now shown at
the same gallery are some of them fam-
ous, and many of them typical of the
great etcher's best days, There are scrip-
tural pictures, landscapes, and portraits;
the latter by far the most interesting
and compelling from a lay point of view.
  In his scriptural etchings Rembrandt
was a vigorously pious man, aggressively
so; he might have been a reformer if he
had not been so great an artist. And his
figures are not mere props on which to
drape sentimental experiences; they are
real people full of personality and in-
terest. Rembrandt apparently did not
devote much time to the study of his-
torical costumes. He garbed his biblical
people to please his own fancy and taste.
His characters are usually stout burgher-
like men, and his women, young and old,
have the ample proportions of his ad-
mired and beloved Saskia. But they are
none the less alive in their alien flesh and
clothes and alert with the emotions of the
religious temperament. Saint Jerome he
places without hesitation in an Italian
landscape, and then proceeds to etch the
man and the surroundings with so mar-
velous a stroke that now, after two hun-
dred and fifty years have passed, the
scene is presented with a vividness and
brilliancy unsurpassed in the etchings of
any other country or time; the landscape