Pictures

“ How strong and vivid an impression some pictures can make upon the mind, photographed there in colors so striking or so appealing to the soul, that all through life they come back to memory again and again as clear and sharp in every detail as the day we first gazed upon them! ”

“ Especially is this the case in early life, when the character is still plastic and the eye still keen: pictures are formed in that brilliant sunshine and under those dim arches of hot grey sky that photograph themselves for ever on the lasting tablets of the human memory. ”

“ There should be in most pictures an opportunity of saying that which shall be interpreted by each one according to his temperament, a little place where each may delight in setting free his own imagination. ”

“ The photographer finds himself in a veritable paradise, able to set up his camera at any desirable distance, even to 'pose' his subjects to suit his fancy, and take pictures of birds, nests and young to his heart's content. ”

“ Superb color portraits of many familiar flowers in their living tints, and no less beautiful pictures in black and white of others—each blossom photographed directly from nature—form an unrivaled series. ”

“ We pass through a gallery of pictures and portraits, classed, to be sure, by subjects, but distinct one from the other, and separated by the projection of as many different frames. We are on a weird, adventurous journey, and make but brief stops, however attractive the strangers or acquaintance we meet. ”

“ Our eyes are wonderful cameras, which God has given us so that we can be constantly taking these beautiful pictures as we pass through life, and look at them not only for the instant, but that we may treasure the pictures up in our memories and make them the rich treasures and joyous heritage of coming years. ”

“ All really great pictures, therefore, exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way. ”

“ Let your pictures be definite, positive, explicit as to details, for the more careful you are in making a picture real to your mind, the easier it will be recalled.
Now, if you desire to recall the whole course of a book, you will find these vividly-made mental pictures have a natural order of sequence, and one will recall the next following, and so on. There is great joy in learning to make pictorial thought-links, and then in the ability they give to the memory to recall them. ”

“ Don’t you love a fine picture? After all, it is only nature caught and fixed. Another thing is, that all my associations with pictures and statues are those of pleasant society, and friends, and good houses, and youth and happiness, though I should love them for their own sakes too. ”

“ The art of photography became known, the sun became an artist, gave us the faces of our friends, copies of the great paintings and statues, pictures of the world's wonders, and enriched the eyes of poverty with the spoil of travel, the wealth of art. The cell theory was advanced, embryology was studied and science entered the secret house of life. ”

“ There are religious pictures; pictures of myths and legends or imaginary subjects; portraits; landscapes; historical pictures, like Washington crossing the Delaware; genre pictures or scenes of every day life; still-life subjects, representing flowers and fruits, dead birds, beasts and fishes, and objects of man’s handiwork; decorative subjects and mural paintings. But this grouping does not settle the matter, since each of these subjects can be treated in more than one way. How it is treated depends upon the motive and point of view of the artist. ”

“ The pictures form of themselves a story, and while sufficiently literal to be easily read, they at the same time possess that quality of suggestiveness which is only associated with work of a creative order. ”

“ There is enough in the picture which is familiar to your actual senses through experience to brace your imagination for a grasp of the unfamiliar elements. The wide plain, the river hurrying between green banks—no apperceptive background fails thus far in the picture. What do we mean by apperceptive background? Let us investigate for a moment the psychology involved in the art of "making pictures." ”

“ A friendly picture-dealer supplies us with half a dozen beautiful little reproductions of the work of some single artist, term by term. After a short story of the artist’s life and a few sympathetic words about his trees or his skies, his river-paths or his figures, the little pictures are studied one at a time; that is, children learn, not merely to see a picture but to look at it, taking in every detail. ”

“ What can be more inartistic and annoying to an educated eye than spots, patches, stars, and sky-rockets, the forms and shapes of which rival, in numberless variety, a display of fireworks? Let us not, therefore, be contented with pictures, however good in other respects, presenting these deformities—so many blots on the photographic escutcheon. ”

“ In such a thoroughfare it is remarkable that satisfied as are its public with transient substitutes for literature, they require permanent types (the term is so far misused it may hardly be further outraged) of Art. Pictures, so-called, are the sole departure from necessity and popular finery which the prominent wares display. ”

“ Many pictures, particularly portraits, by bringing up reminiscences, are a great source of consolation. In millions of houses the most-loved and treasured possession is the photographic album containing the likenesses of dear absent or departed friends. ”

“ We have pictures in abundance which delight the eye, which are artistically drawn and skilfully engraved, but in which, in nine cases out of ten, there is more thought given to effect as a picture than to illustrating the text. ”

“ UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING. INDIVIDUAL COLORED WRAPPERS. Moving pictures and photo plays are famous the world over, and in this line of books the reader is given a full description of how the films are made—the scenes of little dramas, indoors and out, trick pictures to satisfy the curious, soul-stirring pictures of city affairs, life in the Wild West, among the cowboys and Indians, thrilling rescues along the seacoast, the daring of picture hunters in the jungle among savage beasts, and the great risks run in picturing conditions in a land of earthquakes. ”

“ CHAPTER XVI - COLOR, HARMONY, TONE In viewing a picture exhibition the average man, woman and child would be attracted by different aspects of it; the man by the tone of the pictures, the woman by their color, the child almost wholly by the form or subject. ”

“ So with pictures; each will bear an emphasis of attention once, which it cannot retain, though we fain would continue to be pleased in that manner. How strongly I have felt of pictures that when you have seen one well, you must take your leave of it ”

“ They try to put into their pictures the successive and decidedly blurred impressions, from the illustrations I have seen, of scenes in motion, with a result that is certainly startling and interesting, but which it is difficult to believe is beautiful. ”

“ The pictures, with their ruddy light,
Are changed to dust and ashes white,
And I am left alone with night. ”

“ A large proportion of the changes which all pictures pass through in process of construction is stimulated by this consideration—how to stop a wayward eye from getting too near the edge and escaping from the picture. ”

“ Poore’s “Pictorial composition” in this same “Popular art series” treats pictures from the artist’s point of view. There are many illustrations reproduced from rare paintings.
* “The pictures are carefully and thoroughly explained, and much unconscious like or dislike of a picture is accounted for by the clear reasoning.” ”

“ What is more, great pictures would again be painted.
This illustration is valuable allegorically. Great pictures are very like great souls, very like great and beautiful ideas. What is true for pictures is true for men. ”

“ But pass on to another picture which may or may not have the same exact likeness, and we are possessed with quite another feeling; instead of being merely surprised by the cleverness of the imitation, we feel a thrill of delight at a reproduction of nature. In this picture there are not only the clouds we remember, but we can almost feel the shadows which they cast, and the air which stirs them. ”

“ art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. But we who are older use neither glass mirrors nor works of art. We have a direct sense of life. When you gain that you will put aside your mirrors and statues, your toys and your dolls. ”

“ Such a blotted paper held at a distance from the eye would strike the spectator as something excellent for the disposition of the light and shadow though he does not distinguish whether it is history, a portrait, a landscape, dead game, or anything else; for the same principles extend to every branch of art. ”

“ The whole of the pictorial interest may be on one side of a picture and the other side be practically useless as far as picturesqueness or story-telling opportunity is concerned, but which finds its reason for existing in the balance, and that alone. ”

“ When pictures are employed as writing the conception intended to be presented is generally analyzed, and only its most essential points are indicated, with the result that the characters when frequently repeated become conventional, and in their later forms cease to be recognizable as objective portraitures. ”

“ The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance off. ”

“ But when a group of persons has been artistically arranged, and trained by a little practice to maintain an absolute immobility for a few seconds of time, very delightful pictures are easily obtained. ”

“ Pictures must not be too picturesque. ”

“ And for long I sat, just watching the moon creep up, and hearing the thin, dry rustle of the leaves along the holly hedge. And there came to me this thought: What is this Universe—that never had beginning and will never have an end—but a myriad striving to perfect pictures never the same, so blending and fading one into another, that all form one great perfected picture? And what are we—ripples on the tides of a birthless, deathless, equipoised Creative-Purpose—but little works of Art? ”

“ In photography one man delights in the etching point and cannot stop until he has made a net work all over his plate and led us to look at this instead of his picture, which, if good, would have been let alone—a clever device of throwing dust into our eyes. ”

“ Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and this many-coloured pigment of imagination! ”

“ The home and the school may now be decorated with the same art treasures that millionaires enjoy, and all through the magic of process reproduction. The photographer has carried his camera into every corner of the earth and has photographed all the wonders of nature and architecture. ”

“ When in nature we observe a scene that naturally fits a frame and we find ourselves gazing first at one object and then at another and returning again to the first, we may be sure it will make a picture. ”

“ But let the mother begin to talk about the picture, and the child fixes eager eyes upon it, and follows every word with breathless attention. And “talking about” a picture is simply letting the picture talk, provided, of course, that it is the right sort of picture. The artist does all the work: one has only to follow his thought. ”

“ No place worth knowing yields itself at sight, and those the least inviting on first view may leave the most haunting pictures upon the walls of memory. ”

“ Picture-posing opens a very interesting class of subjects for the amateur photographer. When his ingenuity is taxed for new ideas, he can find pleasure and profit in reproducing the compositions of the masters. If he has groups of figures to arrange, he may interest his sitters in posing à la some famous portrait group of an old master. ”

“ Around the windows and above the doors were a multitude of small pictures, which you grow accustomed to regard as spots on the wall, and which you never look at. ”

“ A real story picture differs from one upon which a story may be based as the Adoration of the Shepherds differs from a simple Madonna, or Boughton’s Pilgrims going to Church from Stuart’s portrait of George Washington. The real story picture is dramatic in character and contains a story by implication, the story the artist meant to tell, and to draw this out is quite another matter than building one of our own upon a picture not designed for the purpose. ”

“ Hence the painter will produce pictures of small merit if he takes for his standard the pictures of others. ”

“ CHAPTER XI - THE PLACE OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN FINE ART Since the time that photography laid its claim to be reckoned among the fine arts the attention of artists has been attracted first by the claim and thereafter, with acknowledgments, to the performance. ”