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October 23, 1885.] THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS 675 and powerful effects of light and shade, in well-arranged lines, in figures strongly relieved and roundly modelled, in obtaining that rich, mellow, harmoniously effective com bination of varied tones which we call “colour,” and in the avoidance of those flat, opaque, uniform patches of light and dark, which too often take the place of air and space in photographs, &c.; but none the less has he failed to accomplish the chief thing he aimed at. One man will so read a poem that it stirs the deepest and strongest emotions in his listeners. Another will read the same poem with elocutionary correctness, and with as good a voice, without awakening any deep interest or feeling; and a third will render the finest conceptions of a great poet vulgar and common-place, or even ridiculous. If the subject has not awakened the artist’s sympathies, or has been beyond his imagining, you will assuredly perceive this in his work, whether his tool be lens, pencil, voice, pen, or brush. Another good sign observable is the reduced abuse of retouching, which, executed ignorantly or carried too far, destroys, at once, character, expression, the softness and semi-transparency of flesh, and the anatomy of the face ; converting the varying surfaces given by bone and muscle, down, &c., into one as hard, smooth, and incapable of revealing anything beneath it as a piece of opaque, polished porcelain would be. This was—and, alas 1 is— so serious a blunder, that all lovers of the artistic in photography may, I think, rejoice with me in its decrease and discouragement. Amongst the simpler and more readily-realised subjects in the Exhibition are some of Mr. Robert Slingsby’s, who seems generally to hit what he aims at—truthfulness. I fancy, however, No. 5 in the catalogue, called “ Will it Float?" a charming picture, truthfully full of light and air (of which I give a slight reminiscence in Fig. 1) would have been improved had the figures not been isolated, each one nearly equi-distant from the other, nor all quite on the same plane, tit-tat-toe fashion. 1 think I should 7 I have preferred placing them more nearly in a group, with the smaller figure on the other side of the taller one, some what, but not exactly, in the way indicated in fig. 3. If you regard the four separated figures in this picture as leading lines catching and carrying the eye up and down A first, then B, then C, then D (as in fig 2) right across the picture and out of it, you will see the advantage of an arrangement which brings them together, and, keeping the eye in the picture, carries it from the smaller to the higher as indicated by the line E, fig. 3. The alteration would be very slight, but the effect would have beeu con siderably improved, so far as artistic composition goes. In other respects I regard this little picture as a veritable photographic gem; it embodies such delicate gradations of serial tones, is so faithful to the harmonies of light and shade, and so full of minute detail. There are no empty, meaningless black patches in it, and no burnt-out patches of flat white paper.. 7,3 I turn from this simple subject, simply treated, to some thing far more ambitious, one of the largest and most powerful pictures in the room, No. 74, called “ Dawn and Sunset.” It is by H. P. Robinson, who has been awarded a medal, and of it I give a hurriedly-made and consequently imperfect sketch in fig. 4. This admirable picture is evi dently the result of very careful study, and its technical art qualities are many and good. In it Mr. Robinson has suc ceeded in mastering many serious difficulties ; but I am at a loss to understand why he gave the place of greatest pro minence and honour in his composition to a wash-hand basin and a piece of white soap. This seems, from my point of view, a curious mistake. The result of it is that the picture divides itself into a pair of pictures—excellent ones—each side being a picture better than the whole; and another, the middle part, something by itself, which is quite uninteresting, and has no necessary connection with either side. I should have thought that more action and expression might have been secured, and with advantage, if, instead of the baby being ready for bed, the usual washing process, winding up or commencing the infant’s day, had been in progress, when more of the little one’s chubby face and limbs might have been seen, and some expression of pleasure, amusement, or tenderness been secured in the now placid, emotionless face of the mother. This would give the “ Dawn ” more forcible contrast with the grave and thoughtful sadness of the ancient countryman’s “ Sun set.’’ If thetoo-much honoured chair had taken the place of the cradle, as at C, in fig. 6, and the male figure had been brought nearer the centre, the picture would, per ¬ haps, have had greater unity ; and some of the too many straight and parallel lines in its composition might have been thus got rid of (see the skeleton sketch, fig. 5). Thispictureof familiar cottage life is one from which many a pretentious painter of feeble and ineffective flatnesses might well take a lesson. It is so rich in well subordinated
