iracles of printing--and you may discern their
delicate sureness, subtlety, and economy of gesture. Fitzroy
Carrington quotes the Parisian critic Henri Marcel, who among other
things wrote of the Zorn etchings: "Let us only say that these
etchings--paradoxical in their coarseness of means and fineness of
effect--manifest the master at his best."

Coarseness of means and fineness of effect--the phrase is a happy one.
Coarse is sometimes the needle-work of Zorn, but the end justifies the
means. He is often cruel, more cruel than Sargent. His portraits prove
it. He has etched all his friends, some of whom must have felt
honoured and amused--or else offended. The late Paul Verlaine, for
example, would not have been pleased with the story of his life as
etched by the Swede. It is as biting a commentary--one is tempted to
say as acid--as a page from Strindberg. Yes, without a touch of
Strindberg's mad fantasy, Zorn is kin to him in his ironic, witty way
of saying things about his friends and in front of their faces.
Consider that large plate of Renan. Has any one so told the truth
concerning the ex-seminarian, casuist, and marvellous prose writer of
France? The large, loosely modelled head with its fleshy curves, its
super-subtle mouth of orator, the gaze veiled, the bland, pontifical
expression, the expression of the man who spoke of "the mania of
certitude"--here is Ernest Renan, voluptuous disdainer of democracies,
and planner of a phalanstery of superior men years before Nietzsche's
superman appeared. Zorn in no unkindly spirit shows us the thinker;
also the author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is something, is it not,
to evoke with needle, acid, paper, and ink the dualism of such a brain
and temperament as was Renan's?

He is not flattering to himself, Zorn. The Henry G. Marquand, two
impressions, leaves one rather sad. An Irish girl, Annie, is superb in
its suggestion of form and colour. Saint-Gaudens and his model is
excellent; we prefer the portrait. The Evening Girl Bathing is rare in
treatment--simple, restrained, vital. She has turned her back, and we
are grateful, for it is a beautiful back. The landscape is as
evanescent as Whistler, the printing is in a delicate key. The Berlin
Gallery contains a Zorn, a portrait striking in its reality. It
represents Miss Maja von Heyne wearing a collar of skins. She could
represent the Maja of Ibsen's epilogue, When We Dreamers Awake; Maja,
the companion of the bear hunter, Ul