From the Scalpel to the Needle: Seymour Haden and the British Etching Revival

Seymour Haden (English, 1818–1910) was an unlikely leader of an artistic revival. He made etchings as a pastime, a diversion from his responsibilities as a surgeon. Yet, Haden was instrumental in bringing about etching’s popularity across Britain during the mid-1800s.

Haden started etching as a youth while traveling in the late 1830s. But it took another 20 years before he engaged with the technique in earnest. In the intervening decades, he took over his father’s surgical practice in London and began collecting etchings, particularly the work of Rembrandt van Rijn. His marriage to Deborah Whistler, the half-sister of American painter and printmaker James McNeill Whistler, further heightened his interest in the medium.

Haden was drawn to etching’s ease and accessibility, believing it offered a direct means of expressing the mind. Indeed, his work bears an immediacy that suggests he captured scenes from his daily life as they occurred. He was such a passionate advocate for the medium that he founded the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1880, which helped inspire an artistic movement and a generation of artists.