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May 1, 1885. j THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. 277 action, tax a different class of intellectual acquirements, denoting the artist of a loftier type. And here dry plate photography ministers to the operator’s powers, rendering possible many things for which such artists as Lake Price, 0. G. Rejlander, and others of their time, sighed so often and so vainly. Here steps in that which is above and beyond all mere practical rules, that which we call Feeling. In the expression of feeling and character, the true test of greatness resides, and the most perfect tools and appli ances, with the most skilful manipulation, and the greatest technical knowledge, are here not the end, but the means; not the art, but its tools. A portrait may be very like and very real looking, and yet want that artistic merit which is its crowning perfection, thereby justifying critics and artists who award it an inferior position as a work of art, as the Royal Academicians very justly did the works of a certain well-known sculptor at a certain well-known trial, thereby awakening the scornful ridicule of people who thought the sole test of artistic merit was resemblance in the relative forms of the model and the art-production. A paper on portraiture, written by J. Burnet, F.RS., author of “Practical Hints on Painting,” &e., says:— “ When we hear people cry out that a portrait is as like as it can stare! we may rest assured that it is a vulgar likeness, possessing neither those undulations of expression to be perceived in the living original, which, by giving the beauty attendant on motion, heighten the interest; nor those generalizing principles which add dignity to the character.” We also see likenesses which make people exclaim, “ How ridiculously like! ” which arises from caricaturing the dominant features; and others that are disagreeably like from the hardness and harshness of the light and shade, or general treatment. All these should serve to show that something more than mere likeness is essential to good portraiture. I shall now introduce a few sketches from three well- known pictures, to illustrate the simplicity and naturalness with which a pose is caught—not, mark you, by any more mechanical rule-of-thumb operations of moving the head this way, or the body that; a leg a little more to the right, or arm a little more to the left—but by watchfulness and waiting to catch the sitter in some characteristic atti tude or action, which is part and parcel of his or her character and feeling, something springing from the thought or impulse of a moment, and conveying no other impression to the spectator’s mind. The first is from a thumb-nail sketch made in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1879, from an admirable picture by G. F. Tyrrell, called " Stella." In the character and expression of face, figure, pose, costume, and general treatment, one idea prevails—that of quiet simplicity. The general treatment, in warm delicate tones of grey and yellow, was in tender and complete accord with the pre vailing sentiment. It was a genuine lesson in Feeling. The second, a sketch from the same important collection, was from Marcus Stone’s picture, called “ Summer Time.” Here the air of pleasant and gentle repose expressed by face and attitude was the key-note of a composition charming in its unconventionality, naturalness, and grace ful ease. The third pen-and-iuk sketch is from a portrait by Miss Lovis Starr, a young lady who, if memory deceives not, turned the heads and won the hearts of half the students of the R. A. in the days when she was one amongst them. The gentle sway of the slightly bending figure, the temporarily suspended action of the hands, the expres sive turn of the head and eyes—are all suggestive of life, motion, and purpose. It looks natural enough to have been caught suddenly from nature on an ambushed diy- plate from an unconscious model by an artist who knew and felt of what a picture is really composed. fTo be Continued.') A SIMPLE METHOD OF COLOURING AND ENAMELLING PHOTOGRAPHS. by t. g. WHAITE. The following method of colouring and enamelling prints has proved in the hands of those to whom I have given instructions, of very great value (commercially). Excellent
