Sir Francis Seymour Haden

Sir Francis Seymour Haden , 1818-1910, English etcher, writer, and surgeon. He was a successful practicing surgeon in London (1847-87) and founded there a hospital for the treatment of incurable diseases, but is better known as an etcher and an authority on etching. He did much to familiarize the public with Rembrandt's etchings. Haden's own works, for the most part hard-ground etchings and drypoints, are of a very high quality. The best examples of his art are in the New York Public Library; the Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Metropolitan Museum; and the British Museum. He was Whistler's brother-in-law.

Haden, Sir Seymour. See ETCHING REVIVAL.

Etching Revival. A term applied in Britain to a renewal of interest in etching as a creative printmaking technique, lasting from about 1860 to the First World War, following a period when etching had been used mainly for commercial work such as book illustration. The leading light of the revival was Whistler, one of the greatest etchers of all time, who settled in England in 1859. He particularly encouraged three other important figures in the movement: his brother-in-law Sir Seymour Haden (1818–1910), an amateur artist (he was a surgeon by profession) who in 1880 became first president of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, an organization that did much to enhance the status of printmaking as an independent art form; his friend Alphonse Legros, who became an influential teacher of etching at the Slade School; and Sickert, who was Whistler's most illustrious pupil and one of the greatest etchers as well as painters of his period. Other outstanding British etchers at the turn of the century included Muirhead Bone, D. Y. Cameron, Frank Short, and William Strang. The Revival also attracted many uninspired followers, however, including amateurs, and in 1912 Sickert published an essay entitled ‘The Old Ladies of Etching-Needle Street’ in which he wittily attacked his less gifted brethren. The First World War dealt a severe blow to the Revival, and the market in prints declined sharply in the early 1930s during a period of worldwide economic slump.