APPLICATION OF THE STEREOSCOPE TO PAINTING.
Having explained the only true method of taking binocular portraits
which will appear in correct relief when placed in the stereoscope,
we shall proceed in this chapter to point out the application of the
stereoscope to the art of painting in all its branches. In doing this
we must not forget how much the stereoscope owes to photography, and
how much the arts of design might reasonably expect from the solar
pencil, when rightly guided, even if the stereoscope had never been
invented.
When the processes of the Daguerreotype and Talbotype, the sister arts
of Photography, were first given to the world, it was the expectation
of some, and the dread of others, that the excellence and correctness
of their delineations would cast into the shade the less truthful
representations of the portrait and the landscape painter. An invention
which supersedes animal power, or even the professional labour of man,
might have been justly hailed as a social blessing, but an art which
should supersede the efforts of genius, and interfere with the exercise
of those creative powers which represent to us what is beautiful and
sublime in nature, would, if such a thing were possible, be a social
evil.
The arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture have in every age,
and in every region of civilisation, called into exercise the loftiest
genius and the deepest reason of man. Consecrated by piety, and
hallowed by affection, the choicest productions of the pencil and the
chisel have been preserved by the liberality of individuals and the
munificence of princes, while the palaces of sovereigns, the edifices
of social life, the temples of religion, the watch-towers of war, the
obelisks of fame, and the mausolea of domestic grief, stand under the
azure cupola of heaven, to attest by their living beauty, or their
ruined grandeur, the genius and liberality which gave them birth. To
the cultivation and patronage of such noble arts, the vanity, the
hopes, and the holiest affections of man stand irrevocably pledged;
and we should deplore any invention or discovery, or any tide in the
nation’s taste, which should paralyse the artist’s pencil, or break the
sculptor’s chisel, or divert into new channels the genius which wields
them. But instead of superseding the arts of design, photography will
but supply them with new materials,—with collections of costume,—with
studies of drapery and of forms, and with scenes in life, and facts
in nature, which, if they possess at all, they possess imperfectly,
and without which art must be stationary, if she does not languish and
decline.
Sentiments analogous to these have been more professionally expressed
by M. Delaroche, a distinguished French artist,—by Sir Charles
Eastlake, whose taste and knowledge of art is unrivalled,—and by Mr.
Ruskin, who has already given laws to art, and whose genius is destined
to elevate and to reform it. M. Delaroche considers photography “as
carrying to such perfection certain of the essential principles of
art, that they must become subjects of study and observation, even
to the most accomplished artist.”... “The finish of inconceivable
minuteness,” he says, “disturbs in no respect the repose of the masses,
nor impairs in any way the general effect.... The correctness of the
lines, the precision of the forms in the designs of M. Daguerre, are
as perfect as it is possible they can be, and yet, at the same time,
we discover in them a broad and energetic manner, and a whole equally
rich in hue and in effect. The painter will obtain by this process
a quick method of making collections of studies, which he could not
otherwise procure without much time and labour, and in a style very far
inferior, whatever might be his talents in other respects.” In the same
spirit, Mr. Ruskin[58] considers “the art of photography as enabling
us to obtain as many memoranda of the facts of nature as we need;” and
long before Mr. Talbot taught us to fix upon paper the pictures of the
camera obscura, the Rev. John Thomson, one of the most distinguished of
our Scottish landscape painters, studied, in one of these instruments,
the forms and colours of the scenes which he was to represent. Other
artists, both in portrait and in landscape, now avail themselves of
photography, both as an auxiliary and a guide in their profession; but
there are certain difficulties and imperfections in the art itself,
and so many precautions required in its right application, whether we
use its pictures single, as representations on a plane, or take them
binocularly, to be raised into relief by the stereoscope, that we must
draw from the principles of optics the only rules which can be of real
services to the arts of design.
[58] _Modern Painters_, vol. iii., Preface, pp. 11, 12.
In painting a landscape, a building, a figure, or a group of figures,
the object of the artist is to represent it on his canvas _just as
he sees it_, having previously selected the best point of view, and
marked for omission or improvement what is not beautiful, or what would
interfere with the effect of his picture as a work of high art. His
first step, therefore, is to fix upon the size of his canvas, or the
distance at which the picture is to be seen, which determines its size.
His own eye is a camera obscura, and the relation between the picture
or image on its retina is such, that if we could view it from the
centre of curvature of the retina, (the centre of visible direction,)
a distance of half an inch, it would have precisely the same apparent
magnitude as the object of which it is the image. Let us now suppose
that the artist wishes to avail himself of the picture in the camera
obscura as received either on paper or ground-glass, or of a photograph
of the scene he is to paint. He must make use of a camera whose focal
length is equal to the distance at which his picture is to be seen,
and when the picture thus taken is viewed at this distance (suppose
_two_ feet) it will, as a whole, and in all its parts, have the same
apparent magnitude as the original object. This will be understood from
Fig. 47, in which we may suppose H to be the lens of the camera, RB the
object, and H_y′_ the distance at which it is to be viewed. The size
of the picture taken with a lens at H, whose focal length is H_y′_,
will be _b′r′_, and an eye placed at H will see the picture _b′r′_
under an angle _b′_H_r′_, equal to the angle RHB, under which the real
object RB was seen by the artist from H. In like manner, a larger
picture, _byr_, taken by a camera the focal distance of whose lens at
H is H_y_, will be an accurate representation of the object RB, when
viewed from H, and of the same apparent magnitude. If either of these
pictures, _b′r′_ or _br_, are viewed from greater or less distances
than H_y′_, or H_y_, they will not be correct representations of the
object RB, either in apparent magnitude or form. That they will be of
a different apparent magnitude, greater when viewed at less distances
than H_y′_, H_y_, and less when viewed at greater distances, is too
obvious to require any illustration. That they will differ in form, or
in the relative apparent size of their parts, has, so far as I know,
not been conjectured. In order to shew this, let us suppose a man _six_
feet high to occupy the foreground, and another of the same size to be
placed in the middle distance, the distance of the two from the artist
being ten and twenty feet. The apparent magnitudes of these two men
on the photograph will be as two to one; and if we look at it at any
distance greater or less than the focal length H_y′_ of the lens, the
same proportion of two to one will be preserved, whereas if we look at
the original figures at a greater or less distance from them than the
place of the artist, the ratio of their apparent magnitudes will be
altered. If the artist, for example, advances five feet, the nearest
man will be five feet distant and the other fifteen feet, so that their
apparent magnitude will now be as three to one.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.]
The same observations apply to a portrait of the human face. In looking
at a human profile let us suppose the breadth of the nose to be one
inch, that of the ear one inch, and that we view this profile at the
distance of _three_ feet from the ear, which is two inches nearer the
observer than the nose. The apparent magnitude of the ear and nose will
be as thirty-eight to thirty-six inches, whereas if we view the profile
from the distance of _one_ foot the ratio will be as fourteen to
twelve, that is, the ear will be increased in apparent size more than
the nose. Hence it follows that all pictures should be viewed under
the same angle of apparent magnitude under which they were seen by the
artist as taken photographically, for if we view them at a greater or
less angle than this we do not see the same picture as when we looked
at the original landscape or portrait, under the same angle of apparent
magnitude.
From the observations made in the preceding Chapter on photographic
and stereoscopic portraiture, the reader must have already drawn the
inference that the same landscape or building, seen at different
distances, varies essentially in its character,—beauties disclosing
themselves and defects disappearing as we approach or recede from them.
The picture in the camera, therefore, as used by Mr. Thomson, or, what
is still better, with the exception of colour, the photograph obtained
by the same instrument, will supply the artist with all the general
materials for his picture. The photograph will differ considerably
from any sketch which the artist may have himself made, owing to
certain optical illusions to which his eye is subject. The hills and
other vertical lines in the distance will be lower in the photograph
than in his sketch.[59] The vertical lines of buildings will converge
upwards in the photograph, as they ought to do, in receding from the
eye; and in the same picture there will be a confusion, as we shall
afterwards shew, in the delineation of near and minute objects in the
foreground, increasing with the size of the lens which he has employed.
[59] Sir Francis Chantrey, the celebrated sculptor, shewed me, many
years ago, a Sketch-Book, containing numerous drawings which he
had made with the _Camera Lucida_, while travelling from London to
Edinburgh by the Lakes. He pointed out to me the flatness, or rather
lowness, of hills, which to his own eye appeared much higher, but
which, notwithstanding, gave to him the idea of a greater elevation.
In order to put this opinion to the test of experiment, I had drawings
made by a skilful artist of the three Eildon hills opposite my
residence on the Tweed, and was surprised to obtain, by comparing them
with their true perspective outlines, a striking confirmation of the
observation made by Sir Francis Chantrey.
In his admirable chapter “On Finish,” Mr. Ruskin has established,
beyond a doubt, the most important principle in the art of painting.
“The finishing of nature,” he states, “consists not in the smoothing
of surface, but the filling of space, and the multiplication of life
and thought;” and hence he draws the conclusion, that “finishing
means, in art, simply telling more truth.” Titian, Tintoret, Bellini,
and Veronese have, as he has shewn, wrought upon this principle,
delineating vein by vein in the leaf of the vine, petal by petal in
the borage-blossoms, the very snail-shells on the ground, the stripe
of black bark in the birch-tree, and the clusters of the ivy-leaved
toad-flax in the rents of their walls; and we have seen that a modern
artist, Delaroche, considers a _finish_ of _inconceivable minuteness_
as neither disturbing the repose of the masses, nor interfering with
the general effect in a picture.
The Pre-Raphaelites, therefore, may appeal to high authority for
the cardinal doctrine of their creed; and whatever be their errors
in judgment or in taste, they have inaugurated a revolution which
will release art from its fetters, and give it a freer and a nobler
aim. Nature is too grand in her minuteness, and too beautiful in her
humility, to be overlooked in the poetry of art. If her tenderest and
most delicate forms are worthy of admiration, she will demand from the
artist his highest powers of design. If the living organizations of the
teeming earth, upon which we hourly tread, are matchless in structure,
and fascinating in colour, the palette of the painter must surrender
to them its choicest tints. In the foreground of the highest art, the
snail-shell may inoffensively creep from beneath the withered leaf or
the living blade; the harebell and the violet may claim a place in the
sylvan dell; the moss may display its tiny frond, the gnarled oak or
the twisted pine may demand the recognition of the botanist, while the
castle wall rises in grandeur behind them, and the gigantic cliffs or
the lofty mountain range terminate the scene.
If these views are sound, the man of taste will no longer endure
slovenliness in art. He will demand truth as well as beauty in the
landscape; and that painter may change his profession who cannot
impress geology upon his rocks, and botany upon his plants and trees,
or who refuses to display, upon his summer or his autumn tablet, the
green crop as well as the growing and the gathered harvest. Thus
enlarged in its powers and elevated in its purposes, the art of
painting will be invested with a new character, demanding from its
votaries higher skill and more extended knowledge. In former times, the
minute and accurate delineation of nature was a task almost impossible,
requiring an amount of toil which could hardly be repaid even when
slightly performed; but science has now furnished art with the most
perfect means of arresting, in their most delicate forms, every object,
however minute, that can enter into the composition of a picture. These
means are the arts of photography and stereoscopic re-combination,
when rightly directed, and it is the object of the present chapter
to shew how the artist may best avail himself of their valuable and
indispensable aid.
Every country and district, and even different parts of the same
district, have a Flora and Geology peculiar to themselves; and the
artist who undertakes to represent its beauties owes to truth the
same obligations as the botanist who is to describe its plants, or
the mineralogist its rocks and stones. The critic could not, in
former times, expect more details from his unaided pencil than it
has generally furnished; but with the means now at his command, he
must collect, like the naturalist, all the materials for his subject.
After the camera has given him the great features of his landscape, he
must appeal to it for accurate delineations of its minuter parts,—the
trunks, and stems, and leafage of his trees—the dipping strata of
its sandstone beds—the contortions of its kneaded gneiss, or the
ruder features of its trap and its granite. For the most important of
these details he will find the camera, as at present constructed, of
little service. It is fitted only to copy _surfaces_; and therefore,
when directed to solid bodies, such as living beings, statues, &c.,
it gives false and hideous representations of them, as I have shewn
in a preceding chapter. It is peculiarly defective when applied to
parts of bodies at different distances from it, and of a less diameter
than the lens. The photograph of a cube taken by a lens of a greater
diameter, will display _five_ of its sides in a position, when its true
perspective representation is simply a single square of its surface.
When applied to trees, and shrubs, and flowers, its pictures are still
more unsatisfactory. Every stem and leaf smaller than the lens, though
absolutely opaque, is transparent, and leaves and stems behind and
beyond are seen like ghosts through the photographic image.
[Illustration: FIG. 48.]
This will be understood from Fig. 48, in which LL is the lens of the
camera, AB the breadth of the trunk or stem of a tree less than LL in
width. Draw LA, LB, touching AB in the points A, B, and crossing at
C. Objects behind AB, and placed within the angle ACB, will not have
any images of them formed by the lens LL, because none of the rays
which proceed from them can fall upon the lens, but objects placed
within the angle ECF, however remote be their distance, will have
images of them formed by the lens. If D, for example, be a leaf or a
fruit, or a portion of a branch, the rays which it emits will fall
upon the portions L_m_, L_n_ of the lens, determined by drawing D_m_,
D_n_ touching AB, and an image of it will be formed in the centre of
the photographic image of AB, as if AB were transparent. This image
will be formed by all the portions of the surface of the lens on which
the shadow of AB, formed by rays emanating from D, would not fall. If
the object D is more remote, the shadow of AB will diminish in size,
and the image of the object will be formed by a greater portion of the
lens. If the sun were to be in the direction MN, his image would appear
in the centre of the trunk or stem, corresponding to AB, Fig. 49.
[Illustration: FIG. 49.]
If the stem occupies any other position, _ab_, Fig. 48, in the
landscape, objects, such as _d_, within the angle _ecf_, will have
images of them formed within the corresponding portion of the trunk or
stem. Hence, if AB, Fig. 49, represents the shadow of the stem across
the lens LL, the image of any object, which if luminous would give this
shadow, will be formed within the photographic image of the stem, and
as every part of it may have branches, or leaves, or fruit behind it,
its photographs will be filled with their pictures, which will have the
same distinctness as other equidistant parts of the landscape.
These observations are applicable to the limbs and slender parts of
animate and inanimate figures, when they are of a less size than the
lens with which their photograph is taken. They will be transparent
to all objects behind them, and their true forms and shades cannot be
taken with the cameras now in use.[60]
In order, therefore, to collect from nature the materials of his
profession, the artist must use a camera with a lens not much larger
than the pupil of his eye, and with such an instrument he will obtain
the most correct drawings of the trunks and stems of trees, of the
texture and markings of their bark, of the form of their leaves, and
of all those peculiarities of structure and of leafage by which alone
the trees of the forest can be distinguished. In like manner, he will
obtain the most correct representations of the rocks and precipices,
and the individual stones[61] which may enter into his picture,—of
the plants which spring from their crevices or grow at their base,
and of those flowers in their native grace and beauty, which hitherto
he has either drawn from recollection, or copied from the formal
representations of the botanist.
[60] By using large lenses, we may obtain the picture of an object
within the picture of an opaque one in front of it; and with a
telescope, we may see through opaque objects of a certain size. Many
singular experiments may be made by taking photographs of solid
objects, simple or compound, with lenses larger than the objects
themselves.
[61] In a landscape by Mr. Waller Paton, called the “Highland Stream,”
now in the Edinburgh Exhibition, the foreground consists principally
of a bed of water-worn stones, on the margin of a pool at the bottom
of a waterfall. The stones are so exquisitely painted, that nature
only could have furnished the originals. We may examine them at a few
inches’ distance, and recognise forms and structures with which we have
been long familiar. A water-ousel, peculiar to Scottish brooks and
rivers, perched upon one of them, looks as anxiously around as if a
schoolboy were about to avail himself of the missiles at his feet.
In addition to their correctness as true representations of natural
forms, photographs have a peculiar value, for which no labour or skill
on the part of the artist can compensate. In drawing the sketch of a
landscape, or delineating the trees, rocks, and foliage which are near
him, or the objects in the middle or remote distance, several hours
must be spent. During this period, the landscape and its individual
parts are undergoing no inconsiderable change. A breeze may disturb
the masses of his foliage, and bend his tree stems, and ruffle his
verdure, and throw new reflected lights upon the waving crops, while
every direct light is changing in intensity and direction during the
culmination or descent of the sun. What he has delineated in the
morning will hardly correspond with what he draws at noon, and the
distances which at one time are finely marked in aerial perspective,
will disappear, or even suffer inversion by variations in the intensity
and position of the haze. If cottages, or castles, or buildings of
any kind, enter into the picture, the shadows of their projections,
and the lights upon their walls and roofs will, in sunshine, undergo
still greater variations, and the artist will be perplexed with the
anachronisms and inconsistencies _of his choicest materials_. The
landscape thus composed in patches will, in its photograph, have a
very different aspect, as much in its forms as in its lights and
shadows. The truths of nature are fixed at one instant of time; the
self-delineated landscape is embalmed amid the co-existing events of
the physical and social world. If the sun shines, his rays throw their
gilding on the picture. If the rain-shower falls, the earth and the
trees glisten with its reflexions. If the wind blows, the partially
obliterated foliage will display the extent of its agitation. The
objects of still life, too, give reality and animation to the scene.
The streets display their stationary chariots, the esplanade its
military array, and the market-place its colloquial groups, while
the fields are studded with the forms and attitudes of animal life.
The incidents of time and the forms of space are thus simultaneously
recorded, and every picture from the sober palette of the sun becomes
an authentic chapter in the history of the world.[62]
[62] These views are well illustrated by the remarkable photographs of
the Crimean war.
But, however valuable photography has become to the artist, science
has recently given him another important auxiliary. In order to make
this available, he must employ a small pocket binocular camera, to
take double pictures to be united in the stereoscope. His trees will
thus exhibit the roundness of their trunks and stems, the leaves and
branches will place themselves at their proper distance, and he will
discover the reason of peculiar effects which in the plane photograph
he has been unable to understand. Seeing that his own picture is to be
upon a plane surface, I can hardly expect to convince the artist that
he will obtain more information by reproducing the original in relief.
It is a fact, however, beyond dispute, that effects are produced by
the stereoscopic union of two plane photographs which are invisible in
the single picture. These effects, which are chiefly those of lustre
and shade, are peculiarly remarkable in Daguerreotype, and it is by
no means easy to explain the cause. In a Daguerreotype, for example,
of two figures in black bronze, with a high metallic lustre, it is
impossible, by looking at the single picture, to tell the material of
which they are made; but the moment they are united into stereoscopic
relief their true character is instantly seen. In a Daguerreotype of
Alexander and Bucephalus, portions of the figure seem as if shaded
with China ink of a nearly uniform tint, but when seen in relief the
peculiar shade entirely disappears. The stereoscopic combination of
two surfaces of different intensities, though of the same colour,
produces effects which have not yet been sufficiently studied. But,
independently of these peculiarities, the artist will certainly derive
more aid from his landscape in relief, and from the study of its
individual parts, in their roundness and relative distances, than when
he examines them in their plane representations. The shadows which the
branches of leaves cast upon the trunks and stems of his trees he will
be able to trace to the causes which produce them. Effects in outline,
as well as in light and shadow, which may perplex him, will find an
explanation in the relative distances and differences of apparent
magnitude of individual parts; and, after becoming familiar with his
landscape in relief, as it exists in Nature, he cannot fail to acquire
new principles and methods of manipulation. Nature flattened upon paper
or metal, and Nature round and plump, as if fresh from the chisel of
the Divine sculptor, must teach very different lessons to the aspiring
artist.
The historical painter, or the more humble artist who delineates the
scenes of common or domestic life, will derive from the photographic
camera and the stereoscope advantages of equal importance. The
hero, the sage, and the martyr, drawn from living originals, may
be placed in the scenes where they suffered, or in the localities
which they hallowed. The lawgiver of Egypt, though he exists only
in the painter’s eye, may take his place beside the giant flanks of
Horeb or the awe-inspiring summit of Mount Sinai; and He whom we may
not name may challenge our love and admiration amid the sun-painted
scenes of his youth, of his miracles, and of his humiliation. The
fragments of ancient grandeur which time and war have spared, the
relics of bygone ages which have resisted the destructive elements,
will, as the materials of art, give reality and truth to the pictorial
history of times past, while the painter of modern events can command
the most accurate representations not only of the costume, but of
the very persons of the great men whose deeds he is called upon to
immortalize. The heroes of the Crimean war, whether friends or foes,
will be descried in the trenches in which they fought, amid the ranks
which they led to victory, or among the wrecks of the fatal encounter
in which they fell. The sun will thus become the historiographer of
the future, and in the fidelity of his pencil and the accuracy of
his chronicle, truth itself will be embalmed and history cease to be
fabulous.
But even in the narrower, though not less hallowed sphere of domestic
life, where the magic names of kindred and home are inscribed, the
realities of stereoscopic photography will excite the most thrilling
interest. In the transition forms of his offspring, which link infancy
with manhood, the parent will recognise the progress of his mortal
career, and in the successive phases which mark the sunset of life,
the stripling in his turn will read the lesson that his pilgrimage too
has a term which must close. Nor are such delineations interesting
only as works of art, or as incentives to virtue; they are instinct
with associations vivid and endearing. The picture is connected with
its original by sensibilities peculiarly tender. It was the very light
which radiated from her brow,—the identical gleam which lighted up her
eye,—the hectic flush or the pallid hue that hung upon her cheek, which
pencilled the cherished image, and fixed themselves for ever there.