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  | CHARLES MERYON (1821-1878) Meryon's etchings are noted for the brilliance of their observation and the intensity of their execution. Baudelaire, who greatly admired the artist, sent some of Meryon's prints to Victor Hugo, himself a remarkable amateur artist, who, in responding, wrote, "Since you know M. Meryon, tell him his splendid etchings have dazzled me. Without color - nothing but shade and light, chiaroscuro all alone and entrusted to itself: there is the challenge of etching. M. Meryon resolves it magisterially. What he does is superb. His plates live, sparkle and think." Later, Hugo wrote Baudelaire of Meryon, ". . . this splendid imagination . . . is engaged with the Infinite whether studying the Ocean or Paris. . . . The breath of immensity passes through all his works, and makes his etchings more than pictures - visions." |
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ROBABLY the greatest French etcher of any time" (James D. Burke, Charles Meryon Prints and Drawings, 1974), Meryon, who was interested in becoming an artist at least as early as age fifteen, entered the naval school at Brest in 1837 and undertook a number of voyages over the next seven years. It was during the third of these (1842-46) that he did the drawing for this print which he produced in 1860-63.