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The photographic news
- Bandzählung
- 35.1891
- Erscheinungsdatum
- 1891
- Sprache
- Englisch
- Signatur
- F 135
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- Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
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- Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
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- SLUB Dresden
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- http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id1780948042-18910000
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- Bandzählung
- No. 1690, January 23, 1891
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Zeitschrift
The photographic news
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Band 35.1891
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Band 35.1891
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January 23, 1891.] THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. 71 into my head that there was something very particularly fine in the working of it. I imagined that a soda-deve loped negative gave a better range of tones and all what not. The lapse of time, however, brought calm reflec tion, and then I had to admit that, however pleasant to work, my ammonia-developed pictures were every whit as good. The same thing happened with potash. I read all I could about this alkali, and had potash on the brain for a certain time. The negatives which I got with potash and sulphite of soda were some of them exquisitely beautiful, but as printers they turned out failures. (To he continued.) NOTES ON PORTRAITURE. BY H. P. ROBINSON. No. III. Photography has been called every man’s business. In the past the art has been a too facile refuge for those who have failed in other walks in life. The brewer, and baker, and candlestick maker have found it an easier means of a narrow existence than the practice of the mechanical trades to which they had been brought up, and filled the spaces which would have been better occupied—for the credit of the art—by those who were properly educated for it. It may be said of photographers as Byron said of critics:— “ A man must serve his time to ev'ry trade Save censure—critics all are ready-made." Rut this state of things is improving, and the best places in the business of photography are being gradually filled up by those who have been properly educated and trained to it, just asother businesses are led upto by apprenticeship or articled pupilage ; and to attempt to open a studio now without some such training would be to undertake a great responsibility. What, then, should be the qualification of a first-rate portrait photographer'? Is it a knowledge of chemistry, optics, carpentry ? Certainly not. The first considera tion is that he should be an educated gentleman. Not that he need be educated according to the much-abused conventional or scholastic meaning of the word, which can only see education at the Universities. What is wanted is correct language, easy manners, quick perception and insight into human nature. To this must be added the ordinary knowledge which every educated person should possess, added to what might be called newspaper information, for daily use. He should be all things to all men, and ready to discourse with at least plausible knowledge on all ordinary subjects, and if he could make himself acquainted with a few erudite studies, or have a hobby of some scientific, naturalistic, or archaeological character, it would be to his advantage. General education, then, should be the foundation on which our future superstructure should rest. Without it, or with only a little of it, our photographer may be a good photographer, and able to take a portrait technically excellent, but it would be by a rare chance if it were the best that could be done of the sitter, and in all arts and sciences—and, indeed, in all relations of life—it is better to eliminate chance, yet at the same time being ready to take advantage of any happy opportunity that may occur. The Duke of Wellington said it was the general who made the fewest mistakes who won the battle. Of course there are positions in photography where the best is not called for, or expected, but I am now speaking of the aspirant to the highest position. The next qualification is a knowledge of art. Not merely the shallow acquaintance with it that is to be got from a few lessons in a drawing class or an art school— which, however, would be the best beginning—but the wider knowledge that embraces the history of art and a study of all the schools, from Cimabue down to the many varieties of the present time. Some of these latter are at least remarkable for their enthusiasm. But this as a digression. Art should grow up with other knowledge ; the first dawn of it cannot come too early. It is difficult for a man who has not cared for it the first half of his life to say, “Now I will begin to study art, to be enthusiastic about it, to teach it.” I only know of one instance in which great art came to a man in his mature years without previous study, and that man was Claude Gellee, of Lorraine. To take an exception from our own art, Mrs. Cameron did not take up photo graphy until late in life, and this she did without any training for art of any kind. Her portraits were full of artistic feeling, but as works of art and photography they were very immature. They were full of promise, but lacked fulfilment, although of late they have been lauded to the skies. Before her death she saw the defects of her earlier work, and was advancing to more photographic completeness. The photographic press of the time has been recently ignorantly accused of a “ vulgar outcry ” against Mrs. Cameron’s pictures. To say that her pictures were full of faults did not imply that there was no merit in them. The artistic merit was always recognised ; it was the photographic defects that were condemned by the photo graphic press, not more so, however, than they would be at the present time, even by those -who now virtuously profess to wonder “how critics should have existed to shower abuse ” on these photographs. It was the igno rance of those outside ciitics who professed to admire these very unequal productions, because of their faults, that was chiefly ridiculed. There is an effect of superior knowledge and cleverness in finding beauties where they do not exist, or are not visible to others, that is irresistible to some critics, and it is not a new discovery. Sir Joshua Reynolds noticed it in his time, if we may judge from the following passage in his discourses: “So far, indeed, is the presence of genius from implying an absence of faults, that they are considered by many as its insepara ble companions. Some go such lengths as to take in dication from them, and not only excuse faults on account of genius, but presume genius from the existence of cer tain faults.” To return more directly to our subject, the future photographer, prepared as I have indicated, is now ready to study photography for professional purposes. There can be no doubt that a course of elementary chemistry would be of the greatest use to the budding portraitist, but it should be confined to the elements. I remain convinced, as I always have been convinced, that too much science is inimical to art. There are, of course, some minds great enough to hold the two, but the hard fact of science is apt to clash with the only half-understood feeling of art. There is a good deal that an artist does that he knows is right but cannot easily explain, and any attempt to put it under the micro scope and analyse it scientifically soon makes prose of the poetry, and an exhaustive study of exact science is
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