P. H. Emerson

“ It is wonderful in technical perfection, in sentiment, in truthfulness of impression. Note the reflection of the orange in the mirror, with what skill it is painted. In fact the whole is full of life and beauty,—the beauty of naturalism. It is a master-piece good for all time, and yet it is but the portrait of a merchant and his wife. No religious subject here inspired John Van Eyck, but a mere merchant family, yet in many ways the picture remains, and will remain, unsurpassed. Such powerful minds as the brothers Van Eyck of course influenced all art, and they had many followers ”

“ Nothing in nature has a hard outline, but everything is seen against something else, and its outlines fade gently into that something else, often so subtilely that you cannot quite distinguish where one ends and the other begins. In this mingled decision and indecision, this lost and found, lies all the charm and mystery of nature. This is what the artist seeks, and what the photographer, as a rule, strenuously avoids. ”

“ Art. All this the world allows, and allows that no one save those who by hard work have trained themselves can see these things. But mark the stupidity of mankind, he allows he is blind to the pleasures of science and will remain so, unless he studies the subject, but when it comes to art matters, like a weathercock, he shifts round and thinks he can understand all that without any training at all, yet he is born as blind and incapable of understanding art as he is of understanding science until he has trained himself to understand.
The artist. ”

“ Now the photographer, who studies and hopes to excel at decorative photography, must remember that he must work on the same general principles as he does in producing pictures, that is, he must pay attention, in a broad way, to the tone of the room, to effects of contrast, to harmonies, to the effect of artificial lights and of complementary colours, and above all to naturalism. Thus a delicate landscape must not be enamelled on a tea-cup, for it is obviously false in principle to place a picture on a curved surface. ”

“ Versifying, Prose-writing, Music, Sculpture, Painting, Photography, Etching, Engraving, and Acting, are all arts, but none is in itself a fine art, yet each and all can be raised to the dignity of a fine art when an artist by any of these methods of expression so raises his art by his intellect to be a fine art. For this reason every one who writes verse and prose, who sculpts, paints, photographs, 20etches, engraves, is not necessarily an artist at all, for he does not necessarily have the intellect, or use it in practising his art. ”

“ We thus leave the art of the Middle Ages, as we left the catacombs, with a wish never to see any more of it. One feels the deepest sympathy for great intellects like Giotto, and his greatest followers, whose lots were cast in times of darkness, and we cannot but respect such as struggled with this darkness, and fought to gain the road to nature’s fountains of truth and beauty. ”

“ In fact, these colourists appear to admire a picture from just the same point of view they would an Indian carpet, a Persian rug, old tapestry, or any other conventional design, and seem to judge of it by similar standards; if one suggests that it has no resemblance to what it claims to represent, they reply, ‘Ah, but it is a glorious frame, full of colour!’ But colour in painting can only be really fine so far as it is true to nature. A grey picture may be just as fine in colour as the most gorgeous. ”

“ Man originally vulgar. Remember that the original state of the minds of uneducated men is vulgar, you now know why vulgar and commonplace works please the majority. Therefore, educate your mind, and fight the hydra-headed monster—vulgarity. Seize on any aspect of nature that pleases you and try and interpret it, and ignore—as nature ignores—all childish rules, such as that the lens should work only when the sun shines or when no wind blows. ”

“ If, instead of being satisfied with mere topographical views or foreground sketches, the photographer has cultivated artistic feeling, means are at his command for communicating to others what has impressed himself, and he may produce work of permanent value. Everything depends on what he finds to say and how he tells it. If the operator has artistic insight, it will show itself in his negative, just as it would on his canvas, if he were a painter. ”

“ Every photographer who has the good and advancement of photography at heart, should feel indebted to Mr. Willis for placing within his power a process by which he is able to produce work comparable, on artistic grounds, with any other black and white process. We have no hesitation in saying that the discovery and subsequent practice of this process has had an incalculable amount of influence in raising the standard of photography. No artist could rest content to practise photography alone as an art, so long as such inartistic printing methods as the pre-platinotype processes were in vogue. ”

“ On the landing-stage stands a beautiful sun-bronzed village girl in a plain print dress: she is leaning against the willow and is looking dreamily at the water. We row by on the lake, and are struck by the picture, but above all by the dazzling native beauty of the peasant girl: our eyes are fixed on the ruddy face and we can look at nothing else. If we are cool enough to analyze the picture, what is it we see directly and sharply? ”

“ I feel sure that this general delight in detail, brilliant sun-shiny effect, glossy prints, &c., is chiefly due to the evolution of photography: these tastes have been developed with the art, from the silver plate of Daguerre to the double-albumenized paper of to-day. But, as the art develops, we find the love for gloss and detail giving way before platinotype prints and photo-etchings.
The second great artistic evil engendered by Science, is the careless manner in which things are expressed. The scientist seeks for truth, and is often indifferent to its method of expression. ”

“ Nature does not jump into the camera, focus itself, expose itself, develop itself, and print itself. On the contrary, the artist, using photography as a medium, chooses his subject, selects his details, generalizes the whole in the way we have shown, and thus gives his view of nature. This is not copying or imitating nature, but interpreting her, and this is all any artist can do, and how perfectly he does it, depends on his technique, and his knowledge of this technique ”

“ Hitherto the chief aim of the photographer seems to have been a biting sharpness of detail in the negative, which is generally quite fatal to the result from an artistic point of view, for in breadth lies the beauty and sentiment of landscape. To produce a picture the photographer must select his lens and adjust his focus, so as to get an expression as nearly identical with the visual one as possible, and he must print in such good tone as will give the closest approximation to the values in nature. ”

“ Yes, blush not, oh, dainty one, it is the artist who sees in you a subtler, finer aid than his sorry hand, so monkey-like in its fumblings. To him you give your delicate drawings on zinc to illustrate his books, or on copper to fill his portfolios, to him you give poems of the winds whispering amongst the reed-beds, of the waves roaring in the grey gloaming, of the laughing, bright-eyed mortal sisters of yours. ”

“ The tendency of all exhibitions as at present conducted is to degrade photography as an art; that is our deliberate opinion, after having for several years watched the system of making awards and having served on several juries of awards. A fatal error very common among photographers is to suppose that, because a man is an eminent scientist or a great authority on lenses, he is therefore a fit and proper person to judge pictures. The truth is he is one of the most unfit, for he is prejudiced, and his scientific knowledge has a bad influence on his judgment. ”

“ If you do not study, or if you are incapable, you will remain blind in spite of your looking, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you show to the world commonplaces which you think are gems, for the world will soon tell you they are commonplace. We once knew a person who was colour-blind, who resented the suggestion as a personal insult, until one evening her eyesight was tested, when her colour-blindness was proved.
Let the student then be assured that he is blind, he cannot see art and nature until he has studied them long and closely. ”

“ This delightful lesson leads me to ask, what is painting but an imitative art—an art that is to realize, not to feign. Then some dream that every man who will not submit to long toil in the imitation of nature, flies up, becomes a phantom, and produces dreams of nonsense and abortions. He thinks to save himself under a fine imagination, which is generally, and almost always in young men, the scapegoat of folly and idleness.”... “There has never been a lay painter, nor can there be. ”

“ Still it has its limits, for in it all the subtleties of tone are wanting, and there is, therefore, imperfect modelling. The values cannot be relatively truly rendered, nor is texture well rendered. All this great artists have recognized and have therefore resolutely confined themselves within the legitimate limits. The masters of etching, as Rembrandt in the past and Whistler in the present day, never try for delicacies of tone in their plates, but by line and cross-hatching, like an artist in pen and ink, they express themselves, and their works are beautiful and priceless. ”

“ It is a significant fact that the greatest painters, Durer, Da Vinci, Velasquez, and Rembrandt have been content to paint the life of their own times and not to draw upon their imagination. The learned painter, it cannot be too often repeated, is he who is learned in all the resources of his art, and we question very much whether one great reason why so few great painters have arisen is not that artists as a rule are so poorly and narrowly educated. ”