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476 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [October 2, 1868. which makes a mass with him. The balancing lino of the Indian’s gun cannot be dispensed with, though the artist has judiciously broken it by the intervening knee; nor the cap of the grenadier on the ground, which composes with the lines of his figure, and completes the group ; whilst the dark hat under Wolfe finishes the circle, and gives distance to the lighter parts behind. The gun on the ground com pletes the base-line carried through the foreground. This is a most perfect composition, and should be well studied. We have first the story, told in a touching and distinct manner; next, we have the main lines, traversing the subject horizontally, balancing each other, whilst the lines of the figures, as seen in the analysis, reply perfectly, and balance with each other; at the. same time each figure either com poses with its own base, or forms part of another mass, the whole arrangement, in its linear composition, being admir ably susceptible of subsequent chiaroscuro.” It was with this picture that common sense in historical painting in England commenced. Before this period the most ridiculous absurdities were perpetrated in the costume, not only in historical pictures, but in every other class of painting. The picturesque dress of the day was thought too barbarous for the sham classical taste of the time of James the First. This taste, revived by Verrio and Laguerre, was in the height of fashion when West com menced his “Death of General Wolfe.” A portrait painter seldom allowed his sitter to appear in his own dress; if his subject was a lady, she was transformed into a shepherdess with a spud in her hand, tending sheep in Arcadia; if a youth, the distinction of sex was indicated by giving him a crook instead of a spud, and pandean pipes in his hand. Men were dressed in armour of an earlier period, and it appeared to be a law as binding as those of the Medes and Persians that in historical subjects (which should be treated allegorically, if possible) the figures should be dressed in Greek or Roman costume, or not so much the costume of the actual Greeks and Romans, as a dress in which they were supposed to appear. If a battle-piece was represented, the king or general, “ the noblest Roman of them all,” was set in the front, bearing no possible proportion to the rest of the combatants. Thus, if the dubious costume were to be believed, actions of Englishmen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were performed by the people of ex tinct nations. But to make the thing still more absurd, although the dress was exchanged for Roman armour, the enormous wigs of the period were retained! Fine examples of this false classicality are to be found in the statues about London, especially in Westminister Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral, where, by-the-bye, there is evidence of a further decadence in artistic truth ; the classic heroes of the early Georges were at least dressed, if dressed absurdly; but passing by Dr. Johnson and others who are wrapped in blankets, we come to the monuments erected to the memory of those who fell at Waterloo, and find that some of them, with that enthusiasm which disregards appearances or cares for uniform, actually went into battle in purls naturalibus, without any clothes at all. West, much against the advice of his friends, dismissed this pedantry, and restored nature and propriety in his noble work. Cunningham, in his life of West, speaking of this picture, says :—“ The multitude acknowledged its excellence at once; the lovers of old art, the manufacturers of com positions called by courtesy classical, complained of the barbarism of boots, and buttons, and blunderbusses, and cried out for naked warriors, with bows, bucklers, and battering-rams.” Sir Joshua Reynolds was so blinded by the fashion of the time that be entreated the artist to recollect the danger which every innovation incurred of contempt and ridicule, and urged him to adopt the costume of antiquity, as more becoming the greatness of the subject than the garb of modern warriors. West’s answer was, that the same truth which gives laws to the historian should rule the painter; if, instead of the facts of the action, fiction was introduced, what would posterity think of the truth of the painter ? Reynolds afterwards acknowledged, when he saw the completed picture, that the artist was right: “ West has conquered,” he said to a friend ; “ he has treated his subject as it ought to be treated. I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but will occa sion a revolution in art.” At that time, truth of effect in art was so little regarded that Garrick thought it right to play Macbeth in a full court suit, and murdered Duncan in a bag-wig with a dress-sword ! I have gone at such length into this subject in order that I may point out a similar error in our practice of to-day— one not so glaring and absurd as the classical armour appears to us now, but which seemed quite right to our ancestors, but one which is but a new application, only in a less degree, of the same error—I mean the practice of dressing a sitter for a portrait in fantastic garments, for the purpose of making him up into a picture. The object of portraiture is to make a resemblance of a man as he is, and very little liberty should be allowed or taken in doing it. I am not now speaking of photographs of which the object is to make a picture apart from portraiture—in these any thing may be done, so that general truth is observed—but a portrait professes to represent a prosaic fact, and should fulfil its function. ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF COLLODIONIZED PAPER. BY LUDWIG SCHRANK* The introduction of carbon printing, causing as it did so great a stir in the photographic world, and giving rise to the hope that by its means perfect durability might be obtained, has for a time distracted attention from the endeavours which have been made to substitute gun-cotton, or rather collodion, for albumen in the printing process. The gentle man to whom belongs the honour of having first introduced collodion as a material for printing is the celebrated German experimenter, M. Wothly, of Aix-la-Chapelle ; for although at an earlier date developed collodion positives were transferred to chalk and gelatine paper, still wo believe that in M. Wothly's uranium printing process collodion was employed for the first time as a sensitive coating for paper in the form it is used to the present day. The failure of the uranium printing process was partly owing to the fact that the consumer himself was expected to prepare his own sensitive material by coating the paper with collodion, a manipulation requiring, of course, more care and attention on the part of the operator than is de manded in the employment of albuminized paper. For the same reason Mr. Wharton Simpson’s collodio- chloride process, during the early days of its existence, made but little progress, until several manufacturers introduced into commerce the sheets of paper ready collodionized. But even now that collodion paper is obtainable in commerce, photographers are slow in adopting it, and not until it is more generally known that the carbon process is ill adapted for universal practical employment will attentiou again revert to the old methods. It must be admitted by every impartial observer that the prints upon collodion paper greatly surpass in brilliancy and detail the albu minized picture, and these qualifications, although possibly of no importance in large pictures, are invaluable in prints of lesser size, viz., in stereoscopic, microscopic, and other re productions in which fine details are depicted. Of these advantages must every practical photographer be aware; aud yet on many sides has the introduction of collodion paper been prevented. The first reason for this we have already touched upon, namely, the hope that the carbon process would bring about a total reform in the process of printing. The second reason was that the manufacturers of the collo dion paper were at the commencement not perfectly aufa^ * Photographische Corrupendms.