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41 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [January 24, 1868. readily lifted about to accommodate the position in any part of the room of the sitter, or to occupy any required relation to the background, which is also not only movable, but is constantly moved to produce varied effects of light and shade in the picture. The canopy over the head of the sitter is in like manner readily movable, and when the sitter is once placed in position, he is no further worried with experimental changes to suit the light or existing arrangements. The position of curtains, light, background, tables, chairs, column, or camera—all, or any—are quickly changed if required, to suit the model and produce the pictorial effect which the artist has conceived. In our next we shall describe M. Salomon’s mode of operating : his mode of arranging the light and managing his sitters. In the meantime we conclude our account of ap pliances by quoting some details from a description* by our friend, Mr. Pollock, an American photographer, who passed some time in M. Salomon’s studio during a visit to Europe. “ The lens used was a double combination portrait, by Hermagis, carefully selected, after trial, from six others by the same maker; no diaphragm was used, and in three sittings exposures varied from eighteen to thirty seconds, according to strength of light. The collodion film, previous to development, appeared semi-opaque, creamy, neither very thick nor thin, indicating a full proportion of iodizing, with probably a liberal supply of bromide. The developer acted slowly, considering length of exposure, but brought out a full, dense image, requiring but little intensification, which latter was secured by the addition of a modicum of silver to the developer, and applied, in one case, before washing or fixing; in another, after both operations were concluded. The plates were not fixed in a bath, but held in the hand while a solution of cyanide was poured over them, which acted with energy, cleaning off everything like tendency to deposit on the shadows. The result in each case was a negative yielding prints without retouching, with the characteristic brilliancy of those issuing from this establishment; a marked feature of all M. Salomon’s work, visible alike in negatives and prints, being the granulated, flesh-like texture of the skin, closely resembling flue india- ink stippling.” PHOTOGRAPHY AS A PROFESSION. BY S. THOMPSON. A man’s productions in art, or photography, are the cumu lative result of his whole culture. Their excellence—if they possess it—is the joint resultof natural artistic capability and careful cultivation, It is idle to pretend to coach him up in art-knowledge by means of any number of discursive lectures, labelled, “ On Taste,” “ On Feeling,” &c., &c. There are no “short cuts” to art-knowledge any more tnan to other fields of human learning. Once, and for all, that fact may be accepted as an axiom. He must possess the artistic faculty or temperament, emphatically, to begin with, for the want of which nothing can compensate, and then it must be fostered and developed by a lifetime of untiring study; much of it in the form of careful, thoughtful observation. The best lessons are often, not those the teacher gives, but those the pupil learns. Such an one is always learning, even unto the end of his career. Every picture he looks at, every shop-window he passes, all he reads, all he sees, that is practical, helps to feed the sacred fire. This long education of the eye—the chief portal through which art-knowledge enters—combined with the artistic nature, at length results in that cultivated art-power we call, in all-confusing terms, taste, feeling, and I know not what besides, but which includes them all. The same in kind, with every artist, though widely differing in degree and in its manifestations, it guides him in the instinctive rejection or acceptance of what is good or bad in his work, and is always ready, and always at hand, and is, . * In a letter in the Philadelphia Photographer. ‘n short, himself: a finely-polished edge, like a Damascus blade that, severs the Gordian knot of difficulty in the endless combinations of circumstance that come before him in his daily practice. At once above and beyond rules, though not despising them—for rules are for our aid and guidance, not for our abject bondage—he is not fettered by them, but gets above them by outgrowing them, even as musicians often forget their notes by name, and authors the rules of grammar except in practice. Weaker men get entangled and lose themselves in petty theories about parallel lines, and a great deal more ; get little rules by heart, that serve them as a straitjacket would. Thus “clinging to some ancient saw,” or “ mastered by some modern term,” the result of culture founded on a basis so narrow is often something that perhaps has no glaring faults, but, somehow or other, is not a picture. In such a spirit Gainsborough painted his famous “ Blue Boy,” in half playful, half -contemptuous disproof of a dictum of Reynolds, that “ the masses of light in a picture should be always of a warm, mellow colour, and that the blue or green colours should be kept almost entirely out of the masses.” Gainsborough’s instinct kicked at such rules. He felt that every great painter makes his own laws of colour; so here he chose to show that whether blue should tell in the principal light or not, depended on how the blue is used; and by mellowing and breaking the tint, as Mr. Leslie has pointed out, has succeeded perfectly. Still, Sir Joshua’s is a sound general rule. But rules in art are not intended to be straitjackets. A want of art-knowledge among photographers has now come to be an admitted fact; but it is much to be feared that it is not the means of culture that are so much wanted. They often lie at the very door ; and there is a musty adage that says, “ The tools will always come to the hand that can handle them.” All that books can teach may be found in those pointed out by Mr. Mudd in the YEan-BooK. It is very muck to be feared that a want of that natural bias towards art in so large a number of those who have taken up the practice of photography is at the bottom of it. Many are now beginning to discern in themselves a want of some thing, they scarce know what, but by reason of which they have not advanced in excellence beyond the standard they reached some years ago, and eagerly run after anyone who assumes to teach or coach them up, and are swayed back ward and forward by any pretender who offers a course of his elixir vitae that is to do the business. This invariably ends, as it must do, in disappointment and desertion to some fresh teacher, again ending in disappointment, blank puzzled faces, spherical aberration of ideas, and universal fog 1 Nor can it be alone ascribed to the undoubted fact that the majority were originally designed for altogether different pursuits. It is an equally indisputable fact that many of our most distinguished painters, past and present, including some of the most eminent of the R.A.’s, began life in other trades and professions, some of them in the humblest pos sible callings. But all of them had an irresistible bias towards art, which made them gravitate to it as naturally as water finds its level. It is also well known that a large number of photographers have entered the lists, attracted by the fact that photography was a very profitable pursuit, and, without deliberating about whether their own abilities lay in that direction, took it up in a purely commercial spirit. On the other hand, whoever heard of a painter who became such influenced only by the same reasons ? The hope of making a respectable living, and the chance of something more, may have had its due weight, but the same end might be attained in countless other pursuits. No; they became painters because they could not help it, nor strangle their impulses, even as the poet sings because “ he cannot choose but sing.” It is no disparagement to a man to say that he may have excellent abilities, and many gifts, but not those which peculiarly fit him for this pursuit. Did he ever ask himself seriously if he had in him the raw material which might be
