HADEN, SIR FRANCIS SEYMOUR (1818-191o), Eng lish surgeon and etcher, was born in London on Sept. 16, 1818, the son of Dr. Charles Haden, and was himself a surgeon by pro fession. Aided by Sir W. R. Drake, he founded the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 188o, and was its president until his death. In with Duval. Le Cannes and Col. Guibout, he had travelled in Italy and made his first sketches from nature. He studied the works of the great original engravers, Diirer, Lucas van Leyden and Rembrandt. These studies, besides influencing his original work, led to his important monograph on the etched work of Rembrandt. By lecture and book, and with the aid of the memorable exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1877, he endeavoured to give a just idea of Rembrandt's work, which he clearly expressed in his monograph, The Etched Work of Rembrandt critically reconsidered, privately printed in 1877, and in The Etched Work of Rembrandt True and False (1895).
Haden's own plates are remarkable for a fine original treatment of landscape subjects; they are free and open in line, clear and well divided in mass, and express a noble and dignified style of his own. Even when working from a picture Haden's personality dominates the plate, as for example in the large plate he etched after J. M. W. Turner's "Calais Pier," which is a classical example of what interpretative work can do in black and white. Of his original plates, more than 25o in number, one of the most notable was the large "Breaking up of the Agamemnon." An early plate, rare and most beautiful, is "Thames Fisherman." "Sub Teg mine" was etched in Greenwich park in 1859; and "Early Morn ing—Richmond," full of the poetry and freshness of the hour, was done, the artist has said, actually at sunrise. One of the rarest and most beautiful of his plates is "A By-Road in Tipperary"; "Combe Bottom" is another ; and "Shere Mill Pond" (both the small study and the larger plate), "Sunset in Ireland," "Penton Hook," "Grim Spain" and "Evening Fishing, Longparish," are also notable examples of his genius. A catalogue of his works was begun by Sir William Drake and completed by N. Harrington (188o). During later years Haden began to practise the sister art of mezzotint engraving, with a measure of the success that he had already achieved in pure etching and in dry point. He was knighted in 1894, and died on June 1, 191o.
Other books by Haden not already mentioned are: Etudes a l'eau forte (1865) ; About Etching (1878-79) ; The Art of the Painter-Etcher (189o).