ETCHER AND ARTIST.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 148, 23 June 1923, Page 17

ETCHER AND ARTIST.

CHARLES MERYON IN NEW ZIiAXAXD. (By DORA WILCOX.) One summer day early in IM6, tlie French corvette Le Rhin failed out from Auckland bound for the Marquesas, Tahiti, and eventually for France. And ■though, no doubt, the officers on board had often chafed at their long stay at the ends of all the world, they must have looked for tho last time upon the blue waters of the Waitemata, and the picturesque cone of Rangitoto, with regret. For nearly four years the Rhin had been nominally stationed at Akaroa to protect the interests of the little French settlement there, but she had made , many cruises alortg the New Zealand coast, and in the South Seas, going even so far as Valparaiso to fetch supplies. Her commander, Captain Berard, ahvaye intended to write a description of the voyages of the corvette, but if he did so it was never published. A young officer on board who bore the very Irish-sounding name of Foley, did indeed write a book called "Quatre annees en Oceanic," but though it contains some translations ot Maori legends, it says nothing about Ne«v Zealand, being wholly occupied with Australia. It is from another young "middy," whose name is never mentioned in contemporary records, that we do know something about the Rhin and her etay in our waters. Charles Meryon, the young man in question, was the most unlucky of raorI tals, 'but since his death he has become I increasingly famous. He died poor, I neglected, mad; but he was the grea-test etcher since Rembrandt, and his work fetches fabulous prices to-day. Whilst he was in New Zealand he made innumerable sketches. He drew whalers and whaling-craft at Auckland, canoes at Korarareka, Maoris and their whares, cabbage-treee and treeferns and Akaroa and the hills behind. And upon the beach there he modelled a cast of a. whale, a copy of which exists in Paris still. He could use his pen, too, as well as his pencil, and 'he has left most interesting descriptions of the French colony as it was threequartera of a century ago. When .he returned to France, he determined to lea.ye the Navy, and devote i Kmself wholly to art. He exhibited a design for a picture representing "The Assassination of Marion dv Frene in the 'Bay of Islands, 1772," in the Salon of drawn obviously from the sketches ' of Maoris he had made in New Zealand. |"But the picture was never painted, for jtlie unfortunate Meryon discovered himjself to be colour-blind! He was by this time practically alone in the world, though upon the Rhin he had made seme dextited friends. His mother, a ten-der-hearted and loving soul, though she j had been but a dancer at the opera, had died, his -half-sister was married away. iHia father, an English doctor of Hugne- j I not descent, had formed other ties. Dr. j I Meryon was himself an interesting character, who spent much of his life in the East as physician to tiie brilliant and eccentric Lady Hester Stanhope. In the meantime his son had received his education in Franco, and had entered tho French Navy at his father's own wish. As it was impossible for Charles to succeed as a painter, he turned his attention to other forms of art, and after having considered sculpture, 'he decided to take up etching. In a very short time he had mastered its technique, and within ten years after leaving Auckland he had produced a whole series of masterpieces. But etching was not at that time popular and Meryon was unknown save to a few patrons who recognised his genius. But from those grey days in Paris he liked to look back upon his experiences in the Sunny South amongst primitive nature, and primitive children of nature. Remembering the palms of New Caledonia and the Islands, and the blue skies and seas and bush-covered shores of New Zealand, ho determined to etch a certain number of plates from drawings made long .igo in his youth, and produce an album of "Souvenirs of the Voyage of the 'Rhin.*" As lie received no financial support either from the French Government or from tho general public, ho I was forced to abandon this project, but. |eleven plates were actually etched. Artisjtioally they show a great falling oil' from .his earlier work. but. tho Now Zealand ones are extremely interesting for other reasons. Charles Meryon has loft on record his opinions upon the decorative values of New Zealand vegetation. In Akaroa he lived for some time in the bush on shore, spending his time in cutting down a huge "yew"—probably a totara—in order to make a canoe, and studying the trees, and the birds, and the and the mosses, as his eueten- j book clearly shows. The plants -he loved i !be*t and drew most often, were the cab-bage-tree, the toe-toe, the treefern, and the flax. One of his latest etchings, the, cur,o;i = Rebus upon "do Morny," has a delightful liftle vignette showing the New Ze.\ land coast and sea, with a Maori ouioc i This does not belong to the South I set. ' p \