Kenarth (L'Abreuvoir (Pays de Galles))

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 represents cows on a river bank in Kenarth, South Wales, with a man fishing opposite. It was published in a French series titled "Études à l'eau-forte" (No. XIX) and Harrington's catalogue describes only one state, with the "plate...grounded for mezzotint but only partially scraped." [p. 32]
Schneiderman more recently designated this a second state, noting "additional etched work in the trees, cows and on the bank at the right. The faint work in the river has been burnished out so that the water sweeping around the bank is much clearer [and] horizontal shading added to the sky." [p. 159]