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448 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [September 19,1862. balance of parts, adjusted and composed in accordance with all the rules of art, that work you will very soon see carried all over the world, and to be found in every show case, and every album and collection, especially if its subject have any universality of interest; thus showing that the laws of art belong to truth, and meet with sympathy if put into prac tice in pictorial art, as much as they do in music, or in poetry. Law always belongs to a polity, or rather to anything composed of numbers that has to be brought into a whole— a unity. Pictorial and representative art, therefore, must have its own series of laws. Every work must be a whole composed of parts ; those parts must graduate from largest to least, and (for it is all a principle of a polity) from strongest to weakest, and from high to low. Upon this gradation depends all the harmony. Gradation is the truest illustration of harmony. In art equality never can be harmonious, nor can it in any whole pretending to a unity ; while upon contrast and variety it hangs for interest and for vigour, these must always be in true subordination. But I do not wish to be too aesthetic. I will come at once to the matter on hand. There is in art always a principal object which should immediately arrest the attention of the spectator; it should rivet him at first, absorb him at once, however varied and multiplied the parts may be, or howsoever brilliant. There are many ways of producing this, but it must be done—in fallibly done—and maintained. This is signally omitted in many of the clusterings of natural objects together, which we see produced, for stereoscopic purposes, often, nay, nearly always, interesting, but sadly lacking in this excellence. In a portrait, it is needless to say this climax must be the head; in a group, the leading figure. In a portrait the head, not the chair. In the artist’s whole length, which is the photographer’s carte de visite, it ought not to be the pedestal or the column, these accessories should be introduced so as to lead up to the climax of the composition, and carry, even if they be large objects, the spectator’s eye forward to the principal thing. The carte de visite, even in some of the best show cases in London, is a pedestal with a man near it; it might be cata logued as the portrait of a pedestal, and a column, and a lord. It surely requires more judgment to use these appli ances well in photography than it does in painting, for a painter can play and sketch about his canvass with lines and forms; a painter, too, has more facility of throwing imaginary shadows to bring his quantities into true grada tion, for the gradation of quantities is a very delightful and very subtle idea; he may, perhaps, throw a large shadow over part of a balustrade, and thus has quite as much of it, but what he has is under subjection.* The backgrounds of the great masters in art, such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, had their columns, their pedestals, their buildings in great abundance, often, but they subserved. The splendid whole-length painters, Titian and Velas quez, not forgetting Rubens and Vandyke, all used these additions, but they bound them down under limits of larger and less, many and few, under variety of colours and of tone, tending always to foil something on the one hand, to enhance something on the other, and never to weaken the * The.amount of licence assumed, and in some instances justified, by painters in the distribution of shadows, whether they exist in nature, or solely for the purposes of balance and pictorial effect, will probably astonish most photographers when first brought under their attention. Mr. Frank Howard, in his preface to his "Sketcher's Manual,” says, “He must insist, in the present state of opinions on art, and practice of professors, that the pic ture must be made, honestly if you can, but make a picture. And so long as those pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and others, continue to receive admiration, in which the figures are supposed to be lighted in front, by moons introduced into the background, amateurs are fairly entitled, and will, probably, be contented to avail themselves of the license.” He further says, in the body of the work : “ The production of common pictorial effect will be shown to be very easy, if the amateur will condescend to make use of the expedients employed by the most celebrated artists, namely, to introduce shadows of all kinds and degrees that may suit his purpose, whether possible to be found in nature under such circumstances or not I” We wonder what would be said to the artistic painter, or composition photographer, who should attempt to gain pictorial effect by similar licence. —ED. principal figure; and—let all colourists awaken to this fact— that they put their brilliant colours upon that principal figure, and broke those colours down again, not only by gradations both of similar colours and tones, but into tints of them, down even to an elegant degree of the infinites- simal, which yielded that look of excessive finish—which word, finish, is only another word for the most tender gra dation; for what the artist calls finish, and the nicest possible perception of gradation, are really synonymous. A painter’ begins with his principal figure, or head, and ends with it—it is his first and his last; if surrounding parts have derogated and detracted by their persistence and strength, he coruscates either with hair or velvet cap, or anything else he can. Rembrandt did so with both light and dark, hot and cold colour. While the strength of ac companiments being kept at a distance from the head, keeps up this key-stone idea, and the work delights, nay ravishes, the eye of the beholder, and there is a certain satisfaction that if this principle be moderately well carried out, it never can torture or tire the eye. And to further illustrate, this torture is excessive on looking at some of the modern whole- lengths, called carte de visite, and is not only brought about by the existence of many strong parts, but also by the fact that those parts are lineal and narrow, the cornices am petite, and the balustrades sometimes dwarf-like in character, as if they ought not to be used until they had grown bigger; if painted, liney in execution, and in most cases not copied from good architectural examples. It should be known and remembered, that the Greek architects exquisitely felt, and deeply studied, the exact relative size of all the parts—their projection and their breadth. I appeal to any one, whether there is anything more common looking, more vulgar than bad architecture ; the architecture from the pencil of a car penter or a small builder? These portions of background are mostly done by men of little higher artistic calibre : roses are put in the centres of the pannels of pedestals, where the Greeks would have put a beautiful basso relievo. Fluted columns, too, put with no feeling for breadth, though they are so beautiful, if well adapted. All narrow, all consequently weak draperies— —their poor folds insipid and limpid, while yet they are tortuous, corrugated, harassing and hard. The columns, &c., it may be confessed, are of artificial manufacture, or painted; they should at least be done from fact, anil let an artist do them if possible, and not a mere line and rule man. There is a way of giving them a full, soft edge- a look of thickness ; and this in spite of the necessity that they should be very true, and very square, and straight even to an extent of correctness and care most elaborate. There may be plenty of forms in them, for it is not' 1 multiplicity of forms that is wrong, they might have man' more ; multiplicity of parts always gives fulness, and, if in the right place, yields a look of plentifulness; hut, « ! course, there must be a corresponding quantity of broad and flat portions, and divisions. 1 would further suggest to the photographer, if he lives 111 London and determines to improve his taste in the* 0 respects, to study the building of St. Paul’s, as being 80 wonderful, not only in its beautiful outline, but in the PeI fection of its parts and details; this, as well as all the build, ings by Sir Christopher Wren. He can see any engravins he may desire at the print-room of the British Museum, al if he goes there and asks the amiable keeper for the work of Piranesi, he will get such an admirable illustration 05 round edges, that it will quite dispel his notions of cutti edges—so cutting that against them you could almost cu your hand. , I propose to leave these remarks with you for thepreseni willing to do more if needful, and to be more elabort c s required, or to take up other portions of artistic decora 1012. as they come into the hands of the photographer; irstly sir, you care as much for the theory of art, as you man fam, do in your excellent paper for the formulas of science, IT. sir, yours very respectfully,
