Title

The Art Gallery. Mr. H.B. van Raalte, Curator: A Famous Etcher.

Author

The Register.

Source

The Register (Adelaide)

Details

19 November 1921, page 8.

Publication date

19 November 1921

Physical description

illustrations (b&w) portrait.

Type

Essay/article

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Web address

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/63351926

Abstract

Appointment of Henri van Raalte as Curator at National Gallery of South Australia.

Full text

THE ART GALLERY.

Mr. H. B. van Raalte, Curator. A Famous Etcher.

Thirty-one applications were received by the Governors of the Public Library, Museum, and Art Gallery, for the position of Art Curator, rendered vacant by the death of Mr. Gustave Barnes. These come from every State in the Common wealth, several from England, and one from Scotland. The choice has fallen Mr. Henri B. van Raalte, A.R.E., the celebrated etcher, of Western Australia. He is about 40 years of age, and has had an unusually fine training for his none career. His artistic outlook is regarded as 'sane and reasonable.' His etchings have had a ready sale in the eastern States ' particularly,' and a number of them are shown in the present exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts. 'Mr. van Raalte has a quiet charm of manner, and pursues his art with devoted and arduous application. He ma born in England in 1881, and was educated at the City of London School up to 18 years of age. His art career began, at St. John's Wood School of Art, London, under Messrs. E. C. Clifford, R. I. (water colours), W. Monk, R. E. (etching), C. Orchardson, K.L (drawing from life and oils), and at the Royal Academy Schools, under Sargent, R.A., G. Clausen, H. Dicksee and other Academicians. .After this course of training, Mr. van Raalte continued his studies for eight years, and visited Antwerp and Holland. In 1901 he was elected associate of the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers, and Engravers, and in the same year exhibited on the line at the Royal Academy, and also in several subsequent years. He was represented there again in 1920, when two works were accepted, and one was hung on the line. In 1902 Mr. van Raalte was selected to assist in the representation of English etching in a special number of The Studio, a journal devoted to European and American etch ing and engraving. During the years 1918- 21, eight works Dy Mr. van Raalte were purchased by the Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth national galleries, and in 1920 an etching by him was reproduced in Colour, a London art journal. Mr. van Raalte was appointed a master of painting at St. John's Wood School of Art, London, one of the oldest establishments in London at tnis time. In recent years he has occupied a position as examiner at the Western Australian University and Technical School, and he is now on the University Board of that State in the capacity of an adviser in respect of the subject of etching,

 

Dutch-English.

Mr Van Raalte's mother was of an old Suffolk family; and his father a Dutch man closely related to Josef Israels, the great Dutch painter. His art interests seem to have been first awakened by the drawings of S. H. Sime, which led to his becoming a pupil of Herbert Dicksee. 'The Zuyder Zee has given him much subject matter, and the traditions of the Dutch masters are evident in his work. In The Studio, 1902, special publication on modern etching and engraving, the contributor to the British section placed on record an appreciation of the British etchers of that day and under this appreciation the name of Van Raalte appears. His etchings; 'The Philosopher' and 'The Boat Builder's Workshop at Rye,' are reproduced in the Studio issue, the latter piece being the first of his work to be hung in the Royal Academy. In 1920s 'The Mon arch,' one of his best Australian pieces, met with a similar success. The. first exhibition of the work of Van Raalte to be held in Australia took place in Perth in October, 1919, and his treatment of Western Australian subjects, then made a very strong appeal. Since then the artist has been working at high pressure and the editions , of many of his etchings have been entirely exhausted. An exhibition .of Mr. Van Raalte's etchings held at. Preece's Adelaide Gallery in November, 1920, attracted much interest.

 

A fellow Artist's Appreciation

In the fifth number of Art in Australia (1918) Mr, Lionel Lindsay wrote - The little world of Australian, etchers was stirred recently by the news that a Dutch etcher of repute had settled in Western Australia. Gradually some work came east, and during last year the work of Van Raalte has grown more familiar to the art public of Sydney and Melbourne. The Sydney Gallery has acquired three of his works, and he showed with the Society of Artists this year, when the interest in his work was quickened by his attack upon Australian subject matter. But the etcher is only half a Dutchman. He was born, in England in 1881, his mother com ing of an old Suffolk family to which the late Tom Browne was related, and his father from the village of Raalte near the Zuyder Zee. His art interest was awakened by J.H. Sime, whose happy admixture of line and tone fascinated the future etcher, although it was not until many years after wards, when he had penetrated the mystery of the bitten line, that he was able to apply in etchings qualities which had been his first admiration. His first essays were in the manner of Phil May and Holbein whom he imitated after the manner of' youth. With Herbert Dicksee, R.E., Iris first master, lie had his first glimpse af the craft of. etching, but for Dicksee's method, the painful accumulation of meaningless lines, which acted for so many frontispieces of the Art Journal, he had wisely no use and his first attempts were covertly made. According to my master, he writes, 'I was too much a beginner to start etching, so I did it secretly. My first etching was of a wild cat. I used pure nitric acid and soft beeswax for a ground. I bit the plate so deeply that the wax came off in lumps, and, as I did not know how to get a big dark space, I did a lot of surface biting, and made an un printable, unrecognisable mess. Not a veiy promising start, but most etchers can tell a similar story. when they come to speak of their 'first plate.' But he rapidly improved under the able guidance of Monk, and at the age of 20 was made an Associate of the Royal Etchers, and had exhibited at the Royal Academy. In the following year, 1903, he was represented in The Studio extra number, and hung on the line at the Aca demy, where his work won the praise of Sir Seymour Haden, which' must have proved a splendid spur to the young etcher's ambition. Though an English man by birth and education, van Raalte has often turned to the land of his father for inspiration and subject matter. It is not to be forgotten that it was Haden who re stored to public estimation the virtues of Rembrandt's untrammelled line, and that English etchers of the first rank have ever kept in mind, and in the forefront of technique, the great tradition established by the mighty Dutchman. This affiliation of the Dutch and English spirit is happily evident in van Raalte's work, though I suspect that he was led to portray little Dutch maids and the fishermen of the ample trousers much in the spirit that actuated Phil May— for the sake of their inherent picturesqueness. In his fine etching of 'The Boatbuilders' Shed, Rye,' van Raalte has dealt most successfully with a subject dear to the heart of the English etcher. The sure and sympathetic drawing, the division of interest between the shadowy timbers and the amplified foreground, mark this for a striking work, crowned as it is with such convincing reticence. The little window and the open doorway, the broken lights between the roof beams, possess that mysterious charm which draws the eye to that little. space of sky which Millet considered an essential of all landscape and of which he wrote, "However small it may be, it should suggest the possibility of indefinite extension." This was reproduced in the special number of the studio with a fine dry point entitled 'The Philosopher,' in which the artist has visualized with rare insight some aged Galileo or Columbus meditating by chart and globe the possibility of undiscovered lands. The figure of tbe old man is admirably placed, and the model has been lost in the unconscious attitude of thought. The fine old face sug gests the dignity resident in the portraits of Holbein. Since his arrival in Australia Van Raalte has changed his manner. His line has become looser and more suggestive. His finest Australian plate is undoubtedly 'The Monarch.' In this vision of a great eucalypt the lighting is arbitrary— a sullen flash in time of tempest; but the tree is an unmistakable gum. Its chiaroscuro suggests one of those Rembrandt gleams so brilliantly set in the phrase of Huysman, which came into my mind as I contemplated it. 'I see again that gust of light in the night, the trails of golden powder in the shadow, the suns that set beneath the tenebrous arches. Henri van Raatte is an accomplished artist, and it may be that the chance illness which landed him in the west will be the means of stirring some art movement in the one Australian State that has stayed too long void of all plastic expression.

[The Register (Adelaide), 19 November 1921, page 8.