Portrait photography

“ When the war was over, and there seemed no prospect of another, I drifted away from the colours, back to London, and into the more peaceful [pg 103] occupation of portrait making. Photography was in its infancy in those days; and I can only presume that I took kindly to it because I had always been something of an artist, which was of considerable advantage to me in my new profession. ”

“ Having selected a good artist, and one, also, whose position has enabled him to secure the best tools, the next duty of the sitter regards herself and her costume. In photography a good portrait may be quite nullified by the choice of bad colors in dress. 257 Finery is the curse of the artist, but if he works in oils he can leave it out or tone it down. In photography, as the sitter comes, so she must be taken, with all her excellences or her imperfections on her head. ”

“ Do not call yourself an “artist-photographer” and 255make “artist-painters” and “artist-sculptors” laugh; call yourself a photographer and wait for artists to call you brother.
Falsity of photographic portraits. Remember why nearly all portrait photographs are so unlike the people they represent—because the portrait lens as often used gives false drawing of the planes and false tonality, and then, comes along the retoucher to put on the first part of the uniform, and he is followed by the vignetter and burnisher who complete the disguise.
Amount of landscape to be included in a picture. ”

“ A portrait lens is often used on account of the brilliancy of image, but although it answers well for enlarging portraits, the roundness of its field makes it less suitable for landscapes unless it is considerably stopped down. ”

“ The old, and even modern, portrait painters are answerable for many of the faults to this day committed by photographers, because they take portrait painters as models. Lawrence was especially guilty in the use of conventional backgrounds and accessories. ”

“ No person but a painter, or one who has the eye and the taste of a painter, is qualified to be a photographer either in single or binocular portraiture. The first step in taking a portrait or copying a statue, is to ascertain in what aspect and at what distance from the eye it ought to be taken. ”

“ In all such cases, however, it is best to decide upon the pose, and sketch it from life, and then have the photograph taken in the pose you have selected.
In this way, the light and shade are arranged to suit the artist, and the pose being decided upon by him, the portrait will have the effect of being drawn from life instead of being merely a copy from a conventional photograph.
In general the effect of light used by photographers is exactly the reverse of that chosen by artists. ”

“ In a camera obscura the butcher's cart and the figure of one of our own family amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these twenty years! ”

“ The camera, and more particularly the instantaneous camera, has habituated people to expect in a portrait a momentary expression, and of these momentary expressions the faint smile, as we all know, is an easy first in the matter of popularity. It is no uncommon thing for the painter to be asked in the early stages of his work when he is going to put in the smile, it never being questioned that this is the artist's aim in the matter of expression. ”

“ The portrait painter makes us feel all this in his picture. The attitude is so dignified, the gesture so forcible, the countenance so expressive, that we are impressed at once with the dignity of his character. ”

“ It will be noticed that ordinary photographs have the greater part of the face either in shadow or covered by strong half-tints.
An artist, on the contrary, in posing a head for a portrait, prefers exactly the opposite arrangement, selecting broad and simple effects of light with only enough shadow to give the necessary variety and relief to the features. ”

“ Select a well-defined Photograph, one of light color is preferable, and the background free from spots; it is also well to have a duplicate copy to refer to in case of necessity—a copy of two different sittings. Always select a good subject, as a good portrait depends much on a good model. ”

“ If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; ”

“ For him, a portrait, even as a still-life piece or a landscape, is a piece of temperamental art, a problem in colour, so much so that he is unable to start upon his portrait, has no inclination to do so, before all the conditions of tonality in the face of his model and in the environment selected by him are such that they respond in a measure to the painter's own sense of colour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Portrait painters now depend for their effect on the mere accidents of the entourage; on dress, on landscape, even on broad hints of a man's occupation, putting a plan on the engineer's table, and a roll in the statesman's hands, like the old Greek who wrote 'this is an ox' under his picture. ”

“ Still another application of photography, becoming every day more and more familiar to the public, is that which produces enlarged portraits, even life-size ones, from the old daguerreotype or more recent photographic miniature. As we have seen this process, a closet is arranged as a camera-obscura, and the enlarged image is thrown down through a lens above on a sheet of sensitive paper placed on a table capable of being easily elevated or depressed. ”

“ In nature we are daily witnessing how the various types of features, at once the most classic and homely—highest and lowest, come to mingle so congruously in one face, but such as nature has thought fit to endow30 us, such do we want to be faithfully and accurately delineated, and if such combination of distinctive specialities of art are required for portraiture, which is rarely, if ever, found individually, then how inestimable is the aid of Photography! ”

“ Portrait-painting is the biography of the pencil, and he who gives most of the peculiarities and details, with most of the general character,—that is of keeping,—is the best biographer, and the best portrait-painter. ”

“ One day I was visiting a friend, when I was struck by the excellence of a portrait in his hall of a very refined and beautiful old lady; there was nothing characteristic in the dress. Being a fancier in portraiture, and being mightily ill-contented with modern portrait-painting, this picture pleased me especially; it was a picture as well as a portrait, harmonious in colour and tone, and artistically focussed. ”

“ On that broad basis, portrait takes its exalted place between history and the drama. The portrait I mean is that common one as widely spread as confined in its principle; the remembrancer of insignificance, mere human resemblance, in attitude without action, features without meaning, dress without drapery, and situation without propriety. The aim of the artist and the sitter’s wish are confined to external likeness ”

“ A white spot on the nose and high light on the forehead will serve for modelling; little or no attempt will have been made to get a light which will help the observer to concentrate on the head, or give the head its full measure of rotundity—your eyes will wander aimlessly from cheek to chiffon, from glinting satin to the pattern on the floor, forgetful of the purpose of the portrait, and only arrested by some dab of pink or mauve, which will remind you that the artist is developing a somewhat irrelevant colour scheme. ”

“ There is as much character in the human figure as in the face; consequently full-length portraits are best, because they add to the facial resemblance the attitude and peculiarities of the figure. If the portrait is half-size, then the attitude ought to indicate the position of the lower extremities. ”

“ At the same time, the subtlety of this draughtsmanship cannot be denied. For complexity and difficulty, portraiture takes a supreme place, and yet, on the other hand, as the Frenchman points out in his antithetical sentences, it is to a certain extent a simple art, and we all know artists who are able with a piece of chalk to suggest an even startling likeness which they would be quite unable to complete into the form of a perfect portrait. ”

“ That portrait, in common with most of those by the great masters in the art of portraiture, reveals to you, with an instantly recognised truthfulness, the interior and intrinsic nature of the man, with a luminousness which your own gaze on the living person would not achieve for you. ”

“ A portrait is apt, therefore, to be a surprise to us. The artist looks only from without. He sees us, too, with a hundred aspects on our faces we are never likely to see. No genuine expression can be studied by the subject of it in the looking-glass. ”

“ To-day the photographer has usurped the position of all but the greatest portrait-painters. And this, for the reason that the best modern photographers must also of necessity be artists. They must undergo something of the same rigorous training as painters. It is no longer a question of a good camera, a studio, and the exhibition case of “samples” hung outside the front door. A modern photographer must understand all the nuances of light and shade, tone value, colour, pose, proportion. His studies must have the characteristics of first-class paintings—minus, of course, their colour. ”

“ Every artist must have remarked how often that lightness of hand which was in his dead-colour (or first painting) escaped in the finishing when he had determined the parts with more precision; and another loss which he often experiences, which is of greater consequence: while he is employed in the detail, the effect of the whole together is either forgotten or neglected. The likeness of a portrait, as I have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of the features or any of the particular parts. ”

“ The cast shadow in your background must not be too near the head, as simplicity should be one of the principles of the background, and this can only be attained by breadth of light and shade. The background is of secondary importance, and should not intrude itself on the portrait in its effect of lines or light and shade. ”

“ The first endeavour, also, of a child, playing with a pencil, or a brush, is to draw a portrait, and the very simplest outline does occasionally reveal that an idea of portraiture is latent in the mind of the young artist. If only simplicity of line is desired, nothing can be more simple, while at the same time nothing is more perfect, than the outline or profile drawing of such a great artist as Holbein, or the work of some of the early French draughtsmen. ”

“ In order to give the likeness and correct drawing, the face and bust and hands of portraits are taken by the lens, and then enlarged to the size of an ordinary water-colour sketch, which the artist colours and finishes off in the form of a vignette portrait, by a few free washes of the brush. It is almost impossible to tell these exquisite works of art from an ordinary water-colour, but that the drawing of the face and hands is beyond the human draughtsman’s power. ”

“ The story of the picture. Probably we think we know just how we look and yet I wonder how many of us could tell it to an artist so plainly that he would be able to paint our portrait. Perhaps at best all we could tell him would be that his picture did not look like us, though without knowing why. But it is true that many great artists have painted their own portraits, and very good likenesses they are, too. In some ways it ought to be easy, for as they are their own models they can sit for their pictures as often and as long as they wish. ”

“ In addition to these is the plan I originally employed, of throwing carefully adjusted images of different portraits in succession upon the same portion of the same sensitized photographic plate. It is by the latter process that blended memories are illustrated. In all these methods the general result is substantially the same, subject only to such discrepancy as will always exist between a photograph and the image from which it is made. A composite portrait is in all cases produced, in which the whole of the components coexist. ”

“ On the other hand, it is a matter of common knowledge, that two photographs of the same person, taken under different conditions of lighting or with different lenses may readily be thought to be the portraits of two distinct individuals, or that a photograph of one person may unduly emphasise a momentary expression differing from the normal one, with the result that the portrait may be mistaken for a likeness of someone else. ”

“ It is quite true that to draw a portrait was the aim of the very earliest of draughtsmen, whether it was that of his companion or of one of the beasts of chase, and whether he carved it on a bone, or daubed it on the wall of his dwelling. ”

“ If I paint them, under these artificial circumstances, I fail of course to present them in their habitual aspect; and my portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter always included. When we wish to judge of a man’s character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognizably presented to the view of others. ”