MERYON, CHARLES (1821-1868), French etcher, was born in Paris on Nov. 24,1821. His father was an English physi cian, his mother a French dancer. Meryon's childhood was spent with his mother, but she died when he was still young, and he entered the French navy, and in the corvette "Le Rhin" made the voyage round the world. He was already a draughtsman, for on the coast of New Zealand he made pencil drawings which he was able to employ, years afterwards, as studies for etchings of the landscape of those regions. Meryon left the navy as a lieu tenant. Finding that he was colour-blind, he determined to devote himself to etching. He entered the work studio of one Blery, from whom he learnt something of technical matters, and to whom he always remained grateful. Meryon was by this time poor. It is understood that he might have had assistance from his kindred, but he was too proud to ask it, and had to earn his living by irksome mechanical work. For the sake of practice he made some studies after the Dutch etchers, such as Zeeman and Adrian van de Velde. He then began the series of etchings called "Eaux-fortes sur Paris." These plates, executed from 1850 to 1854, are never to be met with as a set; neither were they published as such; but to Meryon they constituted a series.
Besides these twenty-two etchings "sur Paris," Meryon did seventy-two others, all of them being catalogued in Wedmore's Meryon and Meryon's Paris. This list includes, however, the works of his apprenticeship and of his decline, adroit copies and more or less dull portraits. Among the dozen outside his pro fessed series which are worthy of special mention are three or four beautiful etchings of Paris and two or three of Bourges. Although a master of his craft, he was appreciated only by a few artists, critics and connoisseurs, and when he sold his etchings, it was for a few pence only. Disappointment told upon him, and, frugal as was his way of life, his poverty must have depressed him. He became subject to hallucinations, and a few years after the com pletion of his Paris series he was lodged in the madhouse of Charenton. A partial cure was effected, but in 1867 he returned to the asylum, where he died in 1868.
Of the twenty-two pieces in the Eaux-fortes sur Paris, ten were destined as headpiece, tailpiece, or running commentary on some more important plate. But each has its value, and certain of the smaller pieces throw great light on the aim of the entire set. Thus, one little plate—not a picture at all—consists of verses by Meryon describing the darker side of Paris life. His etchings are spoken
of as views of Paris but they are likewise the visions of a poet and the compositions of an artist who had set himself to create an epic of the city. The Abside de Notre Dame, a general favourite, is commonly held to be Meryon's masterpiece. Light and shade play wonderfully over the great fabric of the church, as seen over the spaces of the river. Meryon was at home with every style of architecture, and in this respect it is interesting to contrast him with Turner, who, in drawing Gothic, often drew it with want of appreciation. It is evident that architecture must enter largely into any representation of a city, however much such representa tion may be a vision and not merely a chronicle. Generally speak ing, Meryon's figures are those of a landscape painter; but some times, as in the case of La Morgue, it is they who tell the story of the picture, or, in the case of La Rue des Mauvais Garcons, with the two passing women conversing secretly, at least suggest it. In L'Arche du Pont Notre Dame, again, it is the figures which give vitality and animation to the scene.
Meryon was little called upon by the character of his subjects to deal with Nature. He drew trees and foliage badly, both in detail and in mass. But it was necessary that he should know how to portray a certain kind of water—river-water, mostly sluggish— and a certain kind of sky—the grey, obscured and lowering sky that broods over a world of roof and chimney. Of such water and such skies Meryon was past master.
Sir Seymour Haden has called Meryon a great original engraver rather than an etcher, and certainly he does not display those virtues of the etcher defined by Hamerton—"selection" and "abstraction." But he was an excellent draughtsman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Philippe Burty, Gazette des beaux arts (1865) ; Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of Meryon (London, 1879) ; Aglaiis Bouvenne, Notes et souvenirs sur Charles Meryon; P. G. Hamerton, Etching and Etchers (1868) ; F. Seymour Haden, Notes on Etching; H. Beraldi, Les Peintres graveurs du dix-neuvieme siecle; Baudelaire, Lettres de Baudelaire (19°7); L. Delteil, Charles Meryon (1907) ; Frederick Wedmore, Meryon and Mervon's Paris. with a descriptive catalogue of the artist's work (1879; 2nd ed., 1892) ; Fine Prints (1896; 2nd ed., 1905) ; W. A. Bradley, Meryon and Baudelaire (1912) ; Loys Delteil, Catalogue Raisonee of the Etchings of Charles Meryon, ed. by H. J. L. Wright (1924) ; Los Delteil, Meryon, trans. by G. J. Remer (1928).