Out of Study Window (Vue Prise de la Maison de M. Seymour-Haden dan Sloane-Street Londres)

Seymour Haden was the unlikely combination of a surgeon and an etcher. Although he pursued a very successful medical career, he is mostly remembered for his etched work as well as for his writings on etching. He was one of a group of artists, including James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) and Alphonse Legros (1837–1911), whose passionate interest in the medium led to the Etching Revival, a movement that lasted well into the twentieth century. The extolling of etching for its inherent spontaneous qualities reached its pinnacle during this time. While the line of the etching needle, Haden wrote, was "free, expressive, full of vivacity," that of the burin was "cold, constrained, uninteresting," and "without identity."
This example of his work shows a cloudy sky with tree tops in foreground and a distant townscape. It was published in a French series titled "Études à l'eau-forte" (No.1) and Harrington's early catalogue describes only one state, noting that "the plate was etched from an upper window in Mr. Haden's house in Sloane Street [and] exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1862." [p. 10] Schneiderman more recently designated this a fourth state of four, looking "toward Brompton, a section of Knightsbridge...The clouds in the center removed, and during printing...some wear of drypoint." [p. 65]