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The photographic news
- Bandzählung
- 12.1868
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- 1868
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- Bandzählung
- No. 502, April 17, 1868
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The photographic news
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Band 12.1868
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- Titelblatt Titelblatt I
- Kapitel Preface III
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- Register The Index To Volume XII 619
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186 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [APRIL 17, 1868. tograph—or, indeed, as it must naturally follow, in any other picture—than that which was actually presented at the mo ment of taking the rest of the picture, although of so little importance as to be scarcely worthy of notice, yet demands a few words, as it may have a detrimental effect on the unthinking, or those whose faith is not quite confirmed in photography as an art. That this doctrine is utterly wrong—a pestilent error, without even a figment of truth to support it—is capable of easy demonstration. It is, indeed, so absurd that the won der is it should have ever found its way to the light. It would be quite beside my present purpose, or beyond the scope of these articles, to enter into any elaborate discussion upon the point; but it will be enough to remind the student that if the idea be carried out in the manner advocated by the school above-mentioned, it comes to this: any land scape is equally beautiful at all times, and, notwithstanding it may be seen under various aspects, a photograph of it, if absolutely accurate, will, in virtue of its accuracy, be a work of the highest art; so that art becomes no more than a mere servile copying of nature, without even the slightest reference to the aspect under which nature is seen. Can art be thus brought down by men of no minds to such a level ? Certainly not. The highest aim of art is to render nature, not only with the greatest truth, but in it: most pleasing aspect; to show forth the storm in its grandeur, or to gladden the eye with the smile of nature’s light. Truth may be obtained without art. The exact representation of unselected nature is truth. The same of well-selected nature is truth and beauty. The former is not art, the latter is. I do not shrink from the statement, although Ruskin may be quoted against me, that the highest duty of man is the cultivation and improvement of God’s works, and by doing so he cultivates himself. As an instance of the improvement of the works of nature by man, going on every day, I ask, what is education but the improvement of nature ? I once heard an eloquent speaker refer to education as the attainment of the highest truth. Pointing to a rough-hewn block of wood or marble, he said that was natural truth ; but polish the rough-hewn surface, and all the delicate grain or markings, the varied veins and gradations before unseen, were now brought out, and a thing of beauty was discovered, which was still higher truth. If we were—following the doctrines of the leave- nature-alone teachers—to abstain from sending our children to school, what sort of savages would they become! Yet that would be leaving nature to herself. Why, it has been the instinct of mankind from the earliest ages—from the time our ancestors painted themselves blue because clothes were scarce—to improve nature. We may be too highly civilized, but a “state of nature” would scarcely be allowed now-a-days, but would soon attract the attention of the police. On the contrary, the endeavour of mankind is, as it should be, to apply that to nature's greatest work which is calculated— " Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, aad all that makes a man.” But, to return to our immediate purpose, there is comfort for the artist photographer, not only in the quotation from Ruskin, at the head of this chapter, which entirely neu tralizes any extract from the same writer to the effect that nature must be slavishly imitated, whether that nature be a pig-stye or a palace, so that it should chance to come before the artist, but in the fact that Turner, who in the opinion of that writer and many others could do nothing artistic ally wrong, or depart in any way from nature, not only improved nature by twisting his views out of all resem blance to the localities they were intended to represent, but actually studied many of his best skies from the end of Margate jetty, and afterwards fitted them to any picture he thought they would suit. I may here quote an anecdote related by Burnett of Turner which is applicable here" Driving down to his house [Woodburn’s] at Hendon, a beautiful sunset burst forth; Turner asked to stop the carriage, and remained a long time in silent contemplation. Some weeks afterwards, when Woodburn called upon him in Queen Anne Street, ho saw this identical sky in his gallery, and wished to have a land- iscape added to it; Turner refused the commission—he would not part with it. Wilkie used to call these studies ‘his stock-in-trade.’ His skies look like transcripts of nature, but they are the result and remembrances of his contempla tion. They are composed of many combinations and changes in the heavens, drawn from the retentive stores of his memory ; they are adapted to the picture in hand by the different qualities required. If the subject is indifferent, he trusts to the richness and composition of the sky to give it interest; and if the scene is complicated, and consists of many parts, he makes use of the sky as the seat of repose.” It must be remembered that nature is not all alike equally beautiful, but it is the artist’s part to represent it in the most beautiful manner possible; so that, instead of its being death to the artist to make pictures which shall be admired by all who see them, it is the very life and whole duty of an artist “ to keep down what is base ” in his work, to support its weak parts, and, in these parts, which are sub ject to constant changes of aspect, to select those particular moments for the representation of the subject when it shall be seen to its greatest possible advantage. I have not in this article advocated the use of artificial skies, or painting in skies on the negative, although I believe in the legitimacy of either method, and it is the constant practice of our best landscape photographers— Bedford, England, Mudd: need I mention more?—to improve their negatives in the sky and other parts with the brush. I have not done so, because I believe the natural sky, added from a separate negative, to give the most complete results ; but I see no reason whatever why the negative should not be improved, if it is found necessary, without any departure from truth. Before photography was discovered, artists used to paint skies to their pictures ; indeed they then, as now, painted their whole pictures; but now that photography has asserted its claim to mechanical accuracy in its transcripts of nature, there has sprung up with it a class of men who would have us believe that to touch a photograph with a paint-brush is almost the greatest sin a man can commit, and they would hardly shrink from even taxing a man with immorality and want of religious principle who, having taken a good photo graph, should, by a few strokes of the pencil, judiciously applied, make it, as well as a good photograph, a good picture. In conclusion, I cannot refrain from quoting part of a letter on the sky in the Photographic News, September 22nd, 1865, by an admirable writer, who, under the nom-dc- plume of “ Respice Finem," favours us too seldom with his views on our art; after which let us turn from these vain j anglers to the consideration of something more profitable. “ The clouds have to play a far more important part in photographic landscapes than they have yet done. I do not say that a photograph without a sky, or with a mass of white for the sky, is altogether unnatural, but, to me, it is very tame, insipid, and unpoetical. How a photographer with a conception of the enormous resources he possesses in the I clouds can ever neglect them in his landscapes I cannot un derstand. They have such a varied beauty in themselves; they give to the artist such a command in balancing and harmonizing his composition; if well managed, they so assist everything else in taking its place, that I cannot understand their frequent neglect by the photographer. One reason is, I know, the difficulty of securing them in the same negative as the foreground. If I am right in my for mer letter on the legitimacy of combination in photography, then there should not be a second opinion as to the propriety of using a second negative, looking to it, however, that the clouds harmonize with the picture and involve no impossi bility or practical solecism. To avoid this a careful and
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