By HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE

MONOTYPING is not a new process. Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci used it, as did others of their age, and artists since then have often amused themselves by making a monotype or two, though until very recently it has been more of an amusement than a serious expression of the painter's craft.

Probably the chief reason for this lay in the fact that no paper sufficiently firm and smooth, and yet quickly absorbent, could be had. The result of making a monotype on unfit paper was more a smudge than a picture, and unfit paper was all there was. To be sure, many of these smudges were charming, but the thing was guesswork, especially if there was any attempt to make the monotype more than a monotone.

Now, however, there is a Japanese paper that meets every requirement of the monotypist in that its texture is exquisite and its absorbent qualities astonishing. When properly handled by an artist who understands the process, the result can be counted upon, though there will always remain that element of surprise which gives a monotype its particular fascination.

Perhaps it might be as well briefly to describe the process, since it is to many persons an unfamiliar one. A monotype is a print, and it is made by painting in oils on a copperplate. The work must be quickly done, so that the thin color may not have time to dry. When the painting is finished, a sheet of paper is laid over it, and the whole passed through a roller press.

Naturally only one impression is possible. Any one becoming possessed of a monotype owns a work of art as unique as a canvas or a water-color.

It may be asked, Why take all this trouble? Why not paint your picture directly on the surface where it is to remain? The answer to that is temperament. To some the charm of the unexpected is peculiarly bewitching, and it is this charm that gives the monotype its strongest attraction. The artist may pay a price for this quality,— he must occasionally throw away a beautifully painted thing because the press has spoiled it, —but his successes are so delightful that he does not grudge the price.

In making a monotype, the artist, at the final instant, steps aside, and accident, pregnant with possibilities, interposes. This accident, if it be happy, restores a quality that has been lost between what the artist was painting and the finished canvas on which he worked. For nature, too, has her accidents, her surprises. A slight deepening of a shadow, a turn in a wind-molded cloud, the stir of a bough, the fall of a flower, a drift of dust, a sense of imminent movement and constant change—who shall say?—all these escape the canvas; for the artist's very intention, without which he cannot work, yet the insistence of which often troubles him, sweeps aside these accidents. He must of necessity have a plan. To some men the plan is all-important; to others it is always a burden, necessary though it be. It is to this latter type that the monotype makes its special appeal; for in every monotype there abides something of the unpremeditated.

Every one who appreciates the element of chance as a constituent of life will immediately understand exactly why a painter may enjoy working in this particular medium, and why a lover of art finds in it a satisfaction he cannot elsewhere discover.

There are other technical difficulties aside from the effect of the press that must be understood. In an unsuccessful monotype there will be disagreeable, scratchy lines of the brush that detract from the result. But the skilful artist can use these to help his work. So with other difficulties. The master makes them serve him; the lesser man is conquered by them.

Gustave Verbeek is a master in this medium, standing at the head of the small group who are seriously working with it. The process holds for him a strong fascination, for he has always sought to keep himself out of his work, and he realizes, as few do, when to stop. There is never an anticlimax in what he does. Indeed, his tendency is to stop just this side of the climax, and to let the imagination of the beholder complete the suggestion. He pushes open the door, as it were, and slips aside to let one see.

At the same time Verbeek thoroughly understands his task as a painter. His technical knowledge is remarkable. He has never been an exhibitor of more than a scattered canvas or two at long intervals, but those who care for what is best know and treasure his work. It is only recently that he has taken up the monotype, but in it, as in his canvases, his delicate perception of values, his feeling for nature, and his expert handling of the brush, are strongly shown. He has apparently succeeded in grasping at once the limitations as well as the advantages of the process, and he uses both with the most happy results.

His first exhibition of monotypes occurred last season at Goupil's, in New York City, and aroused great interest, particularly among artists and art critics, who could best understand the consummate skill revealed in these small impressions that yet conveyed so much of freedom and space, and were so vivid in color and fresh in subject. Since then Verbeek has experimented widely, and has achieved some remarkable successes.

His work with figures is specially interesting and original. Other men have contented themselves with woodland and water, hill and sky, as lending themselves more readily to the squeezing of the press. Verbeek does not hesitate to put his nymph-like nudes among his trees and beside his pools; and how charming is the result!

Few who look at these prints but will feel the Japanese quality they express, or will fail to sense the artist's touch of fantasy. That girl who rides her strange beast with so careless a serenity is skirting the very edge of fairy-land, and not a line in the picture but emphasizes the fancy warmed by humor that inspired the painter without losing a whit of beauty; for beauty is implicit in all Verbeek does.

Verbeek comes honestly enough by his Japanese perception. He was born in Japan, of Dutch parents, and first studied art under native masters in Tokio. He has never lost the quality of that early training, though he is not obsessed by it. Doubtless his inerrant capacity for leaving out the inessential owes something to his Japanese masters ; the rest belongs to his own temperament.

After leaving Japan, the young artist came to San Francisco, where he worked at the academy there, and then made his way to New York and the Art Students' League, where George De Forest Brush particularly attracted him. Next he went to Paris, and at Julian's studied under Constant and Laurens.

With such a groundwork it is no wonder that Verbeek's work is marked by splendid brushwork, sure knowledge, and brilliant color. Look at his hilltop sketch. Those clouds are shaped by the wind itself, and windily they move across the sky. The trees are full of breezy stir, the atmosphere has the fresh, clean radiance of the blowing day. There is nothing thin or light about the contour of hill and rock; the buildings are solid and belong where they stand. An amazing sense of breadth is felt in looking at the little picture. There is all the room in the world under that sky. So, too, with the other landscape, which has been reproduced here; how spacious is the impression derived from it! In these reproductions the particular print effect is partly lost, but fortunately the charm and vivacity persist undimmed. They are truly out of doors, and filled with light; and the effect is achieved with a refreshing simplicity, an entire absence of affectation.

The multicolor monotype, the monotype as a real work of art, is new. Our collectors have never yet turned their attention to it. The man who seeks prints is still occupied with soft-ground etchings, aquatints, and wood-blocks; but here is something that will hold for very many lovers of art an even greater attraction. Each print is a solitary product; by no chance can there exist another exactly like it. In brilliance of color the monotype can be the equal of any other product of the painter's craft, and in its best expressions it must bespeak a dexterity that is little short of marvelous. It will be interesting to see how soon the monotype will take a recognized place with dealers and collectors, what its development is to be. In the short time during which Verbeek has been experimenting with its possibilities he has accomplished astonishing things; he is likely to give us other wonders.

Verbeek, whatever his ancestry or birthplace, is American, and this in the wide sense, for he is as much at home in California as along the Harlem River, where many of his paintings have been made. He is adept at snatching from a scene precisely what he needs, in getting the point of beauty, and eliminating the rest. He has put many a sky-scraper out of existence with a single stroke of his brush, but he loves the sharp contrasts and high color-key that belong to our American atmosphere. Whether he chooses a white farm-house with green shutters or a brick barge on blue water, or paints the wind- tossed boughs of trees against a radiant sky; whether he shows us a young girl dreaming or playing under the light and shadow of nature, he speaks as one of ourselves, not as a foreigner. And we may well be glad to claim this true and brilliant talent that is at once direct and reserved.

Hawthorne, Hildegarde. "A New Achievement in an Old Medium: Gustave Verbeek's Monotypes." The Century Magazine 92.2, June 1916, 96-102.