Képi

“ The great sweep of vision, a sweep covering a hundred subjects perhaps, is obtained by turning the eyes up or down or sideways. But to be true—that is, to see one picture at a time—the eye should be fixed like the lens of a camera, the limit of the picture being the range of the eye and no more. A departure from this rule not only confuses your perspective but crowds a number of points of interest into the square of your canvas, when there is really only one centre point before you in nature ”

“ And so it seems but right that, being so utterly unable to reach the heights or the depths of what we wish to depict, we ought to send back and keep down every step or key of our board in the same proportion as our lights and our darks are—make our picture, in fact, not so much the imitation as the dim reflection that we see in a window sometimes when there is a dark cloth hung behind it, or in the camera obscura. ”

“ In the centre of the mantelpiece was a photograph, the photograph of a man a little older, perhaps, than this newly-arrived visitor, with rounder face, dressed in country tweeds, a flower in his buttonhole, the picture of a prosperous man, yet with a curious, almost disturbing likeness to the pale, over-nervous, loose-framed youth whose eye had been attracted by its presence, and who was gazing at it, spellbound. ”

“ By superposing a negative transparency of a composite portrait on a positive of any one of the individual faces from which it was composed, all that is common to the group ought to be smudged out, and all that is personal and peculiar to that face ought to remain. ”

“ Here, in this book, for example, are one hundred photographs of one hundred of the most famous sights, scenes and monuments in the whole world. To see these sights, these scenes, these monuments, is to attain a liberal education. Now what is seeing? Seeing, the philosopher will tell you, is to have certain waves of light strike your eye and create an impression on your retina of the objects that are in front of you. The retina, in other words, is nothing but a natural camera obscura. And what is a photograph? ”

“ I showed that if two lanterns were converged upon the same screen, and the portrait of one person was put into one and that of another person into the other, the portraits being taken under similar aspects and states of light and shade, then on adjusting the two images eye to eye and mouth to mouth, and so superposing them as exactly as the conditions admitted, a new face will spring into existence. ”

“ The portrait which gives nothing but the sitter's face is as dull as a photograph. Two portraits of the same man, two sketches of the same valley, not only are, but ought to be, quite different from each other. Nature, the facts of the particular face or scene, remain the same for both: but the two different artists, each bringing their own personality, produce different results, when the face or scene has become that composite mixture of man and nature, fact and mind, which is art. ”

“ One spot or circumference there should be toward which through the suppression of other parts the eye is led at once. When there, even though the vision has passed far into the canvas, one is at the focal point only, the true goal of the pictorial intention. Any element which proves too attractive along this avenue of entrance is confusing to the sight and weakening to the impression. ”

“ The trend of vision on leaving the lion is to the extreme right and thence back along the pathway of the dark distance into the picture to the group of trees. Across this is an oppositional balance from the bushes of the foreground to the mountains of the extreme distance. The only line in the composition, better seen in the painting than in the reproduction, counts much in the balance over the centre. The placement of the important item or subject, has little to do with the balance scheme of a picture. ”

“ But even from the point of view of the true visual perception (if there is such a thing) that modern art has heard so much talk of, the copying of the retina picture is not so great a success. The impression carried away from a scene that has moved us is not its complete visual aspect. Only those things that are significant to the felt impression have been retained by the mind; and if the picture is to be a true representation of this, the significant facts must be sorted out from the mass of irrelevant matter and presented in a lively manner. ”

“ If a person gifted with the visualizing power in perfection should pose his eye in the place of the object-glass of the camera, would the generic image in his brain be identical with the photographic composite? (I am assuming, for argument's sake, that the photograph gives a true rendering of any optical image, which, in strictness, it does not.) ”

“ What chiefly concerns us here is the fact that the pictures on our retinas are flat, of two dimensions, the same as the canvas on which we paint. If you examine these visual pictures without any prejudice, as one may with a camera obscura, you will see that they are composed of masses of colour in infinite variety and complexity, of different shapes and gradations, and with many varieties of edges; giving to the eye the illusion of nature with actual depths and distances, although one knows all the time that it is a flat table on which one is looking. ”

“ Slender ribbon-like falls hang lightly from the brow of a sheer precipice or dash in foam down some rocky gulch, and the morning mists that linger on the wooded peaks veil in mystery the beauty beyond. One's desire to possess and perpetuate some scene of beauty becomes irresistible, when, out comes the camera — snap — and the thing is done! ”

“ In every composition the eye should cross the central division at least once. This initiates equipoise, for in the survey of a picture the eye naturally shifts from the centre of interest, which may be on one side, to the other side of the canvas. If there be something there to receive it, the balance it seeks is gratified. If it finds [pg 31] nothing, the artist must create something, with the conclusion that some element of the picture was lacking. ”

“ The bloom on a cheek, the warmth of a youthful body, the sweetness and freshness of a fruit, the edge of a sharp knife, are not these, too, impressions obtainable from a picture? Are they visual? What would a picture mean to an imaginary man, lacking all or many of his senses, who should in an instant acquire the organ of sight alone? ”

“ Portraits, not of the mere formation of mouths and noses, which in so many cases, viewed merely as forms, are defective and unattractive, but portraits of the same faces, upon which the character of the inward mind and heart was so stamped that it threw the mere shape of the features far into the background. ”

“ In my memoir, read about a year ago before the Anthropological Institute, on composite portraits, I used a phrase, which I wrote with a little misgiving, which I have since quoted, and which I wish now to amend. I desired briefly to convey the idea that composite portraits were in a true sense generalizations and analogous to the images stamped on the brain, as already described, and I used these words: "A composite portrait represents the picture that could rise before the mind's eye of an individual who had the gift of pictorial imagination in an exalted degree." ”

“ Out of these few elements the artist has constructed a picture which it is impossible to forget, of which the most striking characteristic is its simplicity, and yet which overflows with perfection. Painted with extraordinary breadth and freedom, so that surface and texture are interpreted by the lightest hand, it glows with life, character and distinction, and strikes us as the most complete—with one exception perhaps—of the author’s productions. ”

“ It is not a shadow, for it is real,—which latter fact is proved daily by those who first coax this image to enter a camera, and no sooner does it get fairly in than the clever artist impales it against a tablet of glass, or ivory, and lo! everybody carries the chained image to his home for everybody else to look at, who chooses so to do. ”

“ In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. ”

“ Do you not see how absurd it is, as used by your exponents of realism? With a bit of charcoal some Raphael draws a face with five lines, and some photographer snaps a camera at the same face. Which would any sane man choose as the best work of art? The five-line face, of course. Why? Is the work of the camera unreal? ”

“ To be effective in a frame, balance and unity are just as necessary. The eye finds repose and delight in the perfect equipoise of elements, brought into combination and bound together by the girdle of the frame.
A picture should be able to hang from its exact centre. Imperfect composition inflicts upon the beholder the duty of accommodating his head to the false angle of the picture. Pictures that stand the test of time do not demand astigmatic glasses. We view them balanced, and they repeat the countersign—“balanced.” ”

“ A picture indeed may be considered as a pattern of another sort, and the real difference is that whereas a pattern is not necessarily a picture, a picture is bound to be a pattern—a pattern having its quantities, its balance of masses, its connecting lines, its various planes, its key of colour, its play of contrasts, its harmony of tones. ”

“ It is strange to think how a scene, in itself uninteresting, becomes agreeable to look at in a picture, from the truth with which it is depicted, and a perfection of colouring which at once contrasts and harmonises the hues of sky and water. ”

“ All that can be said in its favour is, that the row of heads extending from one end of the canvass to the other, across the centre, are correct portraits of personages of note, who figured in the history of the epoch. The worst part of all is, the Heaven of the upper plan of the picture, into which the soul of the Count has the bad taste to apply for admission. ”

“ Light to be manipulated at will, lenses to grasp objects in and out of the present focus with equal intensity and proportion: as a painter places objects upon his canvas at what distance and under what shadow he pleases, so I think the photographer will yet do, and that before long, as he will, I am sure, yet be able to reproduce by the camera and his chemicals all the colours in the object set up before him, as he sees it reflected upon his ground-glass focussing plate. ”

“ We shall now discuss the relation of pictorial art to nature, and shall show the fallacy of calling the most scientifically perfect images obtained with photographic lenses artistically true. They are not correct, as we have shown, and shall again show, but what is artistically true is really what we have all along advocated; that is that the photographer must so use his technique as to render a true impression of the scene. ”

“ And he has this advantage over the writer—that a well-done drawing is a volume in itself; in one glance the eye has absorbed the background which a tedious explanation is necessary to convey in [Pg vii] words, and is free to take in the essential meaning of the drawing. A picture appeals as directly to the eye as does a sunset, or as food to the stomach, or a soft bed to the tired body. It uses a natural sense, not a cultivated faculty. ”

“ Doubt and uncertainty invariably attend to a greater or less extent written notes unaccompanied by drawings, as some recent controversies, respecting changes in Linne and elsewhere, testify. Now that photographs are generally available to form the basis of a more complete sketch, much of the difficulty formerly attending the correct representation of the outline and grosser features of a formation has been removed, and the observer can devote his time and attention to the insertion and description of less obvious objects. ”

“ The more usual type of “spirit photograph,” with which this article is chiefly concerned. Here a plate is exposed upon a sitter or sitters, and on development an “extra” appears, varying from splashes of light to fully-formed features or figures. The presence of a medium is usually regarded as being essential for such phenomena; but similar appearances have occasionally been obtained by amateurs on several well-attested occasions, either unexpectedly, or upon plates deliberately exposed for the purpose, no professional medium being present. ”

“ Now, in pictorial art, a portrait, in order to present a satisfactory and successful resemblance to its subject, must contain lights and shadows. You cannot have all light, or all shadow, but it is necessary to have a judicious mixture of both. ”

“ Today, pictorial illustration depends on photography, and there is apparently little or nothing in life beyond the reach of photographic art. It discloses the internal arrangements of human anatomy; it makes a record of the affairs of the heavenly bodies; it pictures things that the human eye cannot see ”

“ If the artist has a lens which perpetually changes its focus, the result is a portrait in which the outlines are delicately soft and undefined. A view lens, or one that is perfectly flat, occupies nearly two minutes to complete the likeness, and the consequence is, the sitter moves slightly, and the required softness is obtained in an accidental manner. It is evident, therefore, that the most rapidly taken pictures are not necessarily the best. Then people have a hundred different aspects, and to seize the best and reproduce it is the function of genius, and not of chemicals. ”