a large plate is an abomination, diffused in interest, coarse of line; but Brangwyn is not to be considered among this majority.  He is a big fellow in everything.  Besides, Whistler was using the familiar argument, pro doma sua.  The same may be said of Poe, who simply would not hear of a long poem (shades of Milton!) or of Chopin, who lost his way in the sonata form, though coming out in the gorgeous tropical land, the thither side of sonatas and other tonal animals.

Because Catullus and Sappho did not write epics that is no reason why Dante should not.  It is the old story of the tailless fox.  Brangwyn as well as Anders Zorn has been called a rough-and-ready artist.  For exquisite tone and pattern we must go to Whistler and his school.  Brangwyn is never exquisite, though he is often poetic, even epical.  Look at that Bridge, Barnard Castle.  It is noble in outline, lovely in atmosphere.  Or at the Old Hammersmith—­“swell,” as the artist slang goes.  The Mine is in feeling and mass Rembrandtish; and as we have used the name of the great Dutchman we may as well admit that to him, despite a world of difference, Brangwyn owes much.  He has the sense of mass.  What could be more tangibly massive than the plate called Breaking Up of the Hannibal?  Here is a theme which Turner in The Fighting Temeraire made truly poetic, and Seymour Haden in his Agamemnon preserved more than a moiety of sentiment, not to mention the technical prowess displayed; but in the hulk of this ugly old vessel of Brangwyn’s there is no beauty.  However, it is hugely impressive.  His landscapes are not too seldom hell-scapes.

The Inn of the Parrot is quaint with its reversed lettering.  The Road to Montreuil is warm in colour and finely handled.  How many have realised the charm of the rear view of Santa Maria Salute?  It is one of the most interesting of Brangwyn’s Venetian etchings.  His vision of Saint Sophia, Constantinople, has the mystic quality we find in the Dutchman Bauer’s plates.  A Church at Montreuil attracts the eye; London Bridge is positively dramatic; the Old Kew Bridge has delicacy; the Sawyers with their burly figures loom up monstrously; the Building of the New Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, recalls, as treated by the impressionistic brush of Brangwyn (for the needle seems transformed into a paint-loaded spike), one of H.G.  Wells’s terrific socialistic structures of the year 2009.  Remember that Brangwyn is primarily a painter, an impressionist.  He sees largely.  His dream of the visible world (and like Sorolla, it is never the world invisible with him) is one of patches and masses, of luminous shadows, of animated rhythms, of rich arabesques.  He is sib to the Scotch.  His father is said to have been a Scottish weaver who settled in Bruges.  Frank saw much of the world before settling in London.  He was born at Bruges, 1867.  The Golden Book of Art describes him as a one-time disciple of William Morris.  He has manufactured glass, furniture, wall-paper,