The photographic news

• Bandzählung: 7.1863
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1863
• Sprache: Englisch
• Signatur: F 135
• Vorlage: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Digitalisat: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Digitalisat: SLUB Dresden
• Rechtehinweis: Public Domain Mark 1.0
• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-db-id1780948042-186300004
• PURL: http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id1780948042-18630000
• OAI: oai:de:slub-dresden:db:id-1780948042-18630000
• Sammlungen: LDP: Historische Bestände der Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Sammlungen: Fotografie
• Strukturtyp: Band

• Digitalisat: SLUB Dresden
• Strukturtyp: Ausgabe

134 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. [March 20, 1863. colouring matter comes out in the toning—and does his toning solution no good. The plan I have tried is very simple, and any one can easily adopt it. The dyes I have used are known as “ Judson’s Simple Dyes,” and may be had of any chemist, at sixpence per bottle. Six pennyworth would tint, I dare say, half a ream, or there abouts, of paper. A little of the dye, according to the depth of tint desired, should be mixed in boiling water (stirring it up well with a glass rod), and the print should then be immersed in it for a few minutes. This should be done after the print has been fixed and thoroughly washed, and before it has been allowed to dry, otherwise it may make the paper rather rotten. Some colours get a little deeper on drying. Some pictures I happened to have by me were toned to a peculiarly ugly colour. After tinting them in the way I have described, they were converted into very presentable, if not really good, prints. On an emergency, therefore, tinting in this way may be of great importance to the artist. With care and a little practice, different parts of the picture may be tinted with different colours. Hard, inky-looking prints improve by tinting. A mauve tint gives a very good effect to landscape stereos. I have produced one or two curious results in the course of my experiments, and on some future occasion, after further trials, I shall have great pleasure, should you accord me space, in laying them before your readers,—I am, dear sir, yours faithfully, Thomas Lampray. 44, Paternoster Row, London, E.G. March V2th, 1863. Judson’s dyes are sold in small bottles at sixpence and upwards. There are several tints prepared, such as magenta mauve, scarlet, orange, blue, green, brown. A tea-spoonful, of the dye added to a couple of quarts of boiling water will produce a tolerably vivid dye of any of the colours. For the rose tint, recently introduced in albumenized paper, the magenta dye answer's admirably. The print, when completely washed and ready for drying, should be immersed into the dye and left for a few minutes. It should be borne in mind that the longer the immersion the deeper the tint becomes. A very dilute solution of the brown gives a fine india tint, which is, to our taste, the least vulgar of any colour for a picture, and may, indeed, in some cases, with advantage, take the place of white. In portraiture for instance, wher ever a negative is hard, yielding black and white pictures only, a delicate india tint removes much of the effect of hardness, and is, in some cases, very pleasing. The mauve tint, or a mixture of mauve and magenta, will please some persons, and it is possible other mixtures may find a use. But there is one word of caution to which we beg especial attention ; whatever the tint used, let it be as delicate as possible, or it will inevitably be offensive and vulgar. Let it be a tint and nothing more, never approaching a full hue. And bear in mind that the tints deepen very much in drying, they must not, therefore, approach the desired colour when wet, or they will be too dark when dry. It is not improbable that by skilful management these dyes might be used for tinting photographs in various colours, as they are perfectly transparent, but we do not enter into the subject at present. Since writing the above, we see that Mr. Sutton Jias prepared a series of “ Photographic Tints ” to be used in a similar way for a similar purpose. He also adds another suggestion—to perfume the photograph. “-Fancy,” he says, " sending by letter your card portrait tinted and perfumed. Is not the idea exquisite?” Perfuming the photographs! Well, why not? A FINAL WORD ON ART-PHOTOGRAPHY AND ITS CRITICS. Some weeks ago we gave a resume of the opinions of the art-critics upon photography with a few brief comments on these opinions. Since then, our pages, and those of some of our contemporaries, have been considerably occupied by an amusing discussion on the subject, which has well nigh exhausted it. Mr. Rejlander has been quaint, humorous, modest, and forcible, in his defence of the claims of his art. rk ot art, whilst the p not and cannot be. Yet we graph from which it is taken is unhesitatingly challenge conclusions on these two pictures. The photograph is full of tone and gradation, the chiaros- cura is almost perfect and the whole is most harmonious. The engraving is as unlike as it is possible to be and at the same time be a copy. It is a crude, inharmonious mass of spotty lights and black shadows without gradation, tone, or harmony in any sense of the word. But this is art, and Mr. Robinson’s original is photography. “ any true sense pictures.” Now we simply want our readers to mark the fact, that according to the canons of these critics the engraving before us is a work of art, whilst the photo Mr. Wall has been trenchant and unsparing. Mr. Robinson has been terse and good-humouredly caustic. Others have spoken or written on the same side. The art-critics having clone their business, we do not, of course, hear any more of them. Mr. Sutton has once or twice returned to the subject, but as we do not find him defending his original proposi tions, we conclude of course that he has abandoned them. We the more readily come to this conclusion because in his last number he treats the subject with infinite drollery. Refer ring to the authorities quoted by Mr. Wall to prove that truth was an important element in art, he says of a marble statue, “ Why not have a little more truth, and paint it flesh colour, and put a wig of real hair upon its head, and give it glass eyes?” Now, when Mr. Sutton speaks of a wig and glass eyes as truth, he is of course joking ; for have not these, from almost time immemorial, been regarded as typical of false hood, and is not a wig commonly called false hair ? Of course, Mr. Sutton is joking, and a good joke is often an excellent thing to aid in abandoning an untenable posi tion. The truth is, Mr. Sutton has a real appreciation of art-photographs, and we have seen few photographs more artistic than some produced by himself. There is just one point in the argument to which we will refer now. An important distinction we find continually overlooked in these discussions. It is customary with the opponents of the art claims of photography to confound high art with fine art, and because photography is unsuited to the one, to argue that it is incapable of the other. No one that we have ever known has claimed for photography the capability of competing with high or ideal art. Jokes about Michael Angelo or Raphael engaging in photography are therefore altogether beside the mark. No one ever dreams of expecting works of imagination from photograph}', and the most ardent art-photographer would as soon think of comparing one of Madame Tussaud’s wax figures with the Moses of Michael Angelo, as of comparing the best photo graphs with Raphael’s Transfiguration. But is there no fine art but ideal art? If so, what are the works of Land seer, Frith, Ansdell, Creswick, Stanfield, Hook, Linnell, Brett, McCullum, or a host of others whose especial charm is truth in the delineation of nature? To deny to pho tography a position amongst the fine arts because it is not ideal art is then clearly foolish, as by pushing the argu ment to extremes we must exclude by the same argument all the productions of artists whose pride and boast is to paint only from nature. We do not intend, however, to enter into any further dis cussion here of a question which to us appears so self-evident: but before entirely leaving the subject, we should like to call the attention of our readers to a large engraving of Mr. Robinson’s last composition “ Bringing Home the May,” which appears in the Illustrated News of the 28th ult., accompanied by some remarks reiterating the former criticism in that journal, protesting against the want of harmony in tone in photographs, and arguing that they cannot be in ENGLISH AND FRENCH INTERNATIONAL COPY- RIGHT IN PHOTOGRAPHS. Few persons are aware that, although an original photo graph be first published in the United Kingdom, the copy right in such photograph may now be secured in France,