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MR. PENNELL’S ANSWER TO THE DISCUSSION ON “PHOTOGRAPHY AS A HINDRANCE AND A HELP TO ART.” Through the kindness of the editor of the Camera Club Journal, I am able to answer some of the very severe charges and assertions made against my paper and myself at the Annual Conference. In appearing again before the members of the Camera Club, I have no intention of arming myself with a tomahawk and a scalping knife, as a speaker suggested, but I hope I carry much more powerful weapons. Although Mr. Maskell and, I believe, some other members were afforded the opportunity of completely annihilating me, I think, considering their opportunities, that they were extremely unsuccessful. Mr. Maskell began by charging me with ignorance “ of the great advance in photography, artistically considered, which has taken place within the last two or three years,” and nearly every other speaker backed him up in this. It has been my misfortune to have to attend professionally every show which could by any means be construed into an artistic one during the last two or three years, and I am, perhaps, more familiar with photography than the gentle men who discussed my paper may have imagined. I certainly do not see that the work of any of the gentlemen Mr. Maskell mentions is painter-like, for the simple reason that painters do not produce their work by means of a machine. The subject may be painter-like—the execution is mechanical—photography affords persons with artistic sensibilities the means of carrying out, to a certain extent, their impressions, but it does not make them artists, nor is their work produced in an artistic manner, and work not produced in an artistic manner does not rank among the fine arts. Having both etched and photographed, I know very well the cost of materials in each case. An entire etching outfit, including plates, could be bought for probably the fifth of the price of a good lens. As to the six artists and the six cameras, to explain my point would require a considerable amount of space and time, and Mr. Maskell completely failed to understand my meaning. If Mr. Maskell will show me a photograph in colour, and one with its tones and values right, I shall be deeply indebted to him, and at once relinquish my art and take up photo graphy. He also says that my photographs of cathedrals were bad. This is rather a serious charge to make, especially when I tell him that they were the best transcripts of the buildings which could be obtained. I did suppose that every photographer knew that it is impossible to photograph any great building which is in the least foreshortened, and render the perspective truly. If he would give me a true perspective rendering of a subject which I should suggest to him at Westminister Abbey, it would save me much time and drudgery. Mr. Davison has impressed upon me that one can photograph any building provided one can get far enough away from it. Of course one can, but by getting away one loses one’s wished-for point of view—and picture— and the greater proportion of impressive views of large subjects are beyond the powers of any photographer to render correctly. I never said that a photograph would look altogether wrong if turned into a drawing ; but I do say that it would require much correction, and I should be very happy to prove this to Mr. Maskell. Mr. Debenhain remarked that until twenty or thirty years ago, the regular mode of representing horses in motion was very much that of a rocking-horse. I had a faint idea that the Elgin marbles were produced more than thirty years ago, to give merely one example which Mr. Muybridge has quoted as a very striking one of the correct rendering of motion. And I repeat that the greatest artists merely owe to Mr. Muybridge the sincerest thanks for showing them scientifically, for the first time, facts which Mr. Muybridge himself has admitted have been known since the days of the cave-dwellers. Mr. King made a most unfortunate assertion. He said he had supplied me with photographs which I had used in Westminister Abbey. It is quite true that he did sell me some photographs of the Abbey, but for my purpose they were quite worthless, as he will see when my article appears. I was not able to turn his photographs into drawings. To Mr. Davison I would say that if I gave to the Confer ence the idea that I never used photographs, it was because I did not make myself understood. I often am obliged to use them, but always hate it, as it is much more trouble either to copy, trace, or enlarge a photograph, than it is to work from nature. They are often, however, I agree with Mr. Linley Sambourne, of great value, as I said in my paper. I cannot possibly have made the ridiculous statement that the brush or camera, the machinery used, need not be considered. The painter’s tools are everything to him, and the photographer tries to make a machine equal them, and does not succeed. When art becomes as popular as stock-brokering or horse-racing, people will cease to sneer at it—and more than one great English artist has suffered from the sneers of his fellow- countrymen. If Mr. Davison does not understand what “ selection ” means, I can only refer him to any elementary work on the fine arts. I think Mr. Hamerton explains it very well in his “ Etching and Etchers.” It is the art of leaving out, selecting, and arranging—something which photography never can do. If Mr. Davison will show me a photograph in which the details and general effect are better rendered than in the Van Eyck in the National Gallery, I should be very glad to see it. I have seen the flowers shown at the Club, and I was not overpowered by the rendering of detail. Mr. Alfred Parsons could express it much better, and Mr. Francis James would have rendered the same flowers vastly more artistically. One may be perfectly ignorant of the use of photographic appliances, and yet, if photographs are artistic, they, the prints, must be governed by the same laws as any other art work ; and hence an artist is much better qualified to judge of their artistic value than any photographer, unless the photographer is a skilled practitioner of the fine arts. Major Nott, whom I must thank for reading my paper, was good enough to make some very plain statements as to my ignorance of photography, and the modern French school of art. This may or may not be ; certainly Major Nott’s assertions do not prove it. Mr. Blanchard spoke of Winckle’s “ Book of Cathedrals,” and compared unfavourably with Cassell’s. I never heard of Winckle’s book, but the only difference between Britton’s and Cassell’s is that the greater part of the work in the former was done with the camera-lucida, and the latter from photographs. The best work, however, in Cassell’s—that by Mr. George Seymour and by Mr. C. E. Mallows—was not done by the camera at all, but drawings were made from points from which no photographs ever could have been taken. As to Mr. Welf ord’s conclusion that I have tried
