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WHERE ART BEGINS
_Crown 8vo. cloth extra, 2s. 6d._
LESSONS IN ART.
By HUME NISBET.
_With 22 Illustrations by the Author._
'A book which merits prompt and hearty recognition.... Mr. Nisbet
is himself an accomplished artist, and the book is the outcome of
long years spent in the attempt to teach others the principles and
laws of painting and drawing.... Mr. Nisbet possesses such an
enviable faculty of clear and attractive exposition that this
little book is sure to make its own welcome.'--LEEDS MERCURY.
'A readable little volume.... The author has endeavoured to write
out some of the strictly necessary rules and laws of drawing and
painting for the use of students, so that they may be able to work
at home, and spare their masters a number of questions if they are
at art schools. The book deals with drawing and painting in water
and oil colour, and concludes with "Hints on General Art."... Art
students will, no doubt, find the little work helpful, and the
general reader may dip into it with pleasure.'--PALL MALL GAZETTE.
'A very useful book for young students.... Mr. Nisbet has a knack
of explanation so clear and pointed that few can fail to understand
the many practical hints with which the little book abounds.... The
book may be cordially commended.'--SCOTSMAN.
'A most entertaining as well as instructive book, that will commend
itself to young and old alike. To the author's experience as an art
teacher is doubtless due the lucid manner in which he writes. The
completeness and range of the lessons are remarkable.'--MANCHESTER
EXAMINER.
'The advice given will certainly succeed in its aim of enabling art
students to work at home and "spare their masters a number of
questions." Equally helpful will be the examples of drawing and
painting with which the letterpress is relieved, and which is
invariably of a high order of merit.'--SCOTTISH LEADER.
'Quite one of the best books of the kind which we have recently
encountered is Mr. Nisbet's "Lessons in Art"; a little volume
filled with sound and practical advice, and charmingly
illustrated.... This little book possesses distinct merit, and that
of a kind which is never too common in popular manuals.'--SPEAKER.
'With this book at hand no one need be at a loss, and may, by
attending to the valuable instructions given, become not only
proficient, but attain to a meritorious position as an
artist.'--STIRLING JOURNAL.
'The first part of the book treats of drawing, and is in the main
practical in aim and useful as guidance.'--SATURDAY REVIEW.
'A very useful handbook for beginners.'--GRAPHIC.
'A book written by a teacher who is an artist, and who fortunately
remembers that he has been a student, and doubtless this is why the
sympathies of his readers are promptly enlisted.'--DAILY CHRONICLE.
'"Lessons in Art" should prove of use to both pupils and
teachers.'--MORNING POST.
'As a teacher in the old School of Arts, Edinburgh, Mr. Nisbet may
be credited with knowing the kind of questions which students are
likely to ask, and he has here answered them in theoretical and
practical detail.'--GLASGOW HERALD.
London: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214 Piccadilly, W.
[Illustration: A NEW ZEALAND FERN-TREE GULLY [_p._ 129]]
WHERE ART BEGINS
BY
HUME NISBET
AUTHOR OF
'LESSONS IN ART', 'LIFE AND NATURE STUDIES' ETC.
[Illustration]
_WITH 27 ILLUSTRATIONS_
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1892
DEDICATED
WITH AFFECTIONATE REGARDS
TO MY DEAR FRIEND AND WELL-WISHER
EDMUND J. BAILLIE, F.L.S.
OF CHESTER
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION
When a few really congenial spirits meet together, it is astonishing how
quickly the subject which perhaps one of the party starts will grow, and
how many branches it will shoot out before its vitality can be
considered exhausted.
My present subject has grown up in a very congenial atmosphere. A number
of sympathetic students, who learnt to appreciate my practical work,
continued to draw from me some ideas partly practical, partly
theoretical, on the subject which has always been a part religion with
me, whether in my working or my dreaming moments--Art and its
all-permeating influence over humanity in the social and spiritual
conditions. I take it that Art permeates the entire body of humanity,
from the flesh-devouring savage to the asphodel-adoring æsthetic, in a
greater or lesser degree, according to the sanitary conditions of their
lives; and as it permeates, so it brings us closer to what we regard as
human perfection.
In this spirit I have written out the following reflections, blending
the practical with the theoretical and personal, as a pendant to my
'Lessons in Art' and 'Life and Nature Studies.' In the first book I have
attempted to give the Alpha of Art; in the second I have given the
Omega, as far as I myself know about Art; and in the present I have
sought to give something of what lies between.
Whether I have been lucid enough to enable the reader to follow me, or
sympathetic enough to interest him in my subject, I must leave to his
own judgment. I can only say that my views are the reflections of one
item appealing to other items in the big sum of humanity, written out
honestly as the outcome of his own personal experience of the subject
which interests him most deeply, and with the hope that he may find some
readers who have had similar thoughts upon Art and Mankind, although
they may not have been tempted to write them down. With this hope I
leave my book to the consideration and judgment of each reader.
HUME NISBET.
HOGARTH CLUB: _June 1892_.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
A WORD BEFORE 1
I. WHERE ART BEGINS 5
II. A STUDY IN LIGHT AND SHADOW 26
III. THE PRIMARIES: YELLOW, RED, AND BLUE 56
IV. ART IN ITS RELATIONSHIP TO EVERYDAY LIFE 97
V. ON PICTURE LIGHTING 119
VI. SHIPS: ANCIENT AND MODERN 132
VII. ILLUSTRATIVE ART: PAST AND PRESENT 150
VIII. ART IN MINOR DIRECTIONS 176
IX. DRESS AND DECORATION 196
X. SOME OF THE OLD MASTERS 229
XI. THE SACRED AND THE COMIC SIDES OF ART 250
XII. ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH ART 272
XIII. NATURE WORSHIP 297
INDEX 317
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
A NEW ZEALAND FERN-TREE GULLY. _Frontispiece_
REPOSE. _Vignette for title-page_
GROUP OF FISHER-FOLK. _From a photograph by
John Foster of Coldstream_ 5
A GROUP OF WORKING HORSES. _From a photograph by John Foster of
Coldstream_ 26
ANCIENT ASSYRIAN HALL: THE FEAST OF SARDANAPALUS. _From a
sepia sketch by the Author_ 56
AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CORRIDOR. _From a sepia sketch
by the Author_ 61
ON THE ESK RIVER, TASMANIA. _From a photograph by Major
Aikenhead, Launceston_ 97
A NEW GUINEA VILLAGE. _A study of lighting from behind_ 125
NOAH'S ARK. _A process paper drawing_ 132
SHIP-OF-THE-LINE, 1815. _Pen and ink_ 134
A VIKING BOAT. _Process paper_ 138
FISHING BOATS. _Pen and ink_ 142
HOMEWARD BOUND. _Process paper_ 143
THE STORM. _Pen and ink_ 147
AT REST. _Pen and ink_ 148
FROM BREYDENBACH'S TRAVELS 150
ST. CHRISTOPHER. _From 'A Treatise on Wood-Engraving,'
page 46_ 153
HISTORY OF THE VIRGIN MARY. _From 'A Treatise on Wood-Engraving,'
page 72_ 154
ALBERT DÜRER'S APOCALYPSE 156
BY CHRISTOPHER JEGHER, AFTER RUBENS 158
A PANEL OF BLACK AND GOLD 176
INITIAL LETTER O, AND MOONLIGHT 196
THE AVENUE--HOBBEMA 229
HARMONY. _A night effect_ 250
ART SUBJECTS 272
A GARDEN SCENE 297
THE ANCIENT NILE 300
_Note A._--John Foster, of Coldstream, is one of the most
accomplished of photographic artists, who has made a specialty of
cattle groups, and whose studies are nearly always perfect in their
grouping and effect.
_Note B._--Major W. Aikenhead, of the Launceston Rifle Regiment,
Tasmania, favoured me with some of his finest specimens, with
permission to reproduce them. His aerial effects are wonderful and
delicate, too tender in most instances for reproduction by process:
therefore I have been compelled to give one of his most positive
pictures as a specimen of his art and the beauties of the country
in which he works.
[Illustration]
WHERE ART BEGINS
_A WORD BEFORE_
[Illustration: I]N the first flush of youth our imaginative faculties
are very active. In childhood we rove through Fairyland and play with
the little elves; in youth the tiny elves have grown up to be nymphs of
our own size and age, and from the summer moonlight we step into the
rosy dawn, all fragrant and lightsome, with a glamour over everything
which is delicious to our senses. By-and-by, as youth falls from us, we
step out from the glades and meadows into the dry and dusty highway of
life, our bags upon our backs and our rakes in our hands, with a long
stretch of uninteresting country before us and a shadeless sky above us;
we go out to gather specimens and dissect everything which we cannot
understand. Then comes the twilight, when we sit down to rest upon the
cliffs at the end of the road, with a limitless ocean in front of us,
and what we have left behind.
In childhood, youth, and manhood we are for ever looking forward; in age
we are apt to look behind.
In childhood, youth, and manhood we have very little room in our hearts
for pity or charity, but when we sit down calmly to rest and look back,
if the angels of divine pity and universal charity are not near to us to
counsel and condone, our case is hopeless in the extreme.
The world has lost its childhood, and so there are no longer fairies in
it; it is quickly losing its youth, and Love does not now flutter
through the sky, a living cherub, but lies on the ground motionless,
denuded of its wings, waiting shiveringly for the sharp knife of the
vivisector.
Everything sacred or emotional is put to the test of reason, and we are
growing so hard and matter-of-fact, that what might have made us weep
before only affords matter for discussion now.
Yet misery and poverty and suffering are with us still, as they were
always; perhaps more so now, when the few are becoming richer and the
many poorer and less able to fight.
Still, one softening relic of the past remains to us, although it is
taking on the garments of the age--Art, which, however much it may
strive to imitate the emotionless present, no more can exist without
emotion than could the rainbow without colour.
True art is like what religion ought to be--all-sufficing and
all-embracing. Within its magic circle live the virtues and the vices,
so that when the student approaches he may take his choice with which to
walk through life.
If he takes the virtues as his guides, he paints and understands only
beauty, and thus raises himself and his audience towards faith, love,
and charity.
If he takes the vices, he becomes brutishly realistic and degraded,
inspiring his audience with unbelief, passion, and hopeless selfishness.
And therefore, as charity is the greatest of all the virtues, I take my
art as the direct inspiration towards charity; feeling that if this
angel follows me along the dry highway, and shelters me with her
spreading wings, when I come to the cliffs and sit down to rest I may
look behind and see the sins I have left covered with white flowers and
that limitless ocean bathed in the golden glory of the setting day--a
day not all mis-spent or profitless.
How to do the best for art, since art can do so much for us, is the
intention I have had in the writing of these chapters. How to live so
that we may be in the best condition to fulfil our obligations without
losing a moment of the time at our disposal, this is the motive of these
self-reflections.
Looking round upon nature, I find that the animals nearest perfection
are graminivorous--that is, nearest to that state of peace and purity
which we believe Heaven to be--whilst the carnivora represent the vices
of unrest, passion, cruelty, and ambition.
Reasoning out this observation further, I think that if man could live
naturally, without excitement and haste or the voracious desire for
place and fortune, he would become more poetic, more art-loving, and
charitable; therefore, nearer to a state of perfection by imitating the
graminivora than he will by following the habits of the carnivora.
Still, I must admit that before this can be accomplished society must be
altogether changed. From experience as a vegetarian and a
non-vegetarian, I have come to the conclusion that unless man can afford
to step aside from the rushing stream of competition, and the thousand
excitements which hurry us along in a mad race with every nerve on the
strain, he cannot possibly be a vegetarian, or, in its highest sense, a
true artist.
I think that climate has nothing whatever to do with this question, but
that the false conditions of life have everything to do with it. The
most God-like man is the one who can abnegate without feeling the
sacrifice. This is the ideal man, and he will be a vegetarian.
But he who is forced into the arena of life by circumstances, and who is
compelled to fight, must live as the fighting animals live, and be
carnivorous.
This is the choice in life which some of us have before us at the start,
and to those who can choose I mainly address these chapters. For the
rest, who, like myself, must run at breakneck pace until we fall down
and die, I can only pray for indulgence from the angels of pity and
charity.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: GROUP OF FISHER-FOLK
(_From a photograph by John Foster of Coldstream_)]
CHAPTER I
_WHERE ART BEGINS_
[Illustration: S]TANDING, as I do at present, in front of the partly
opened gateway to that land of wonders--photographic discovery--I should
like to begin my remarks, before looking through the narrow aperture,
with a glance backwards, say twenty years, to what the science and art
were then, and what they have since become, before we surmise what
it--photography--may be twenty years hereafter.
I mean to take up photography only where it joins hands with my own
work--painting--in the broad sense of the word, which, I may safely
assert, is taking it nearly all round.
When I look back twenty years to the time at which I first began to mix
with the professors of the sun-craft--'Brothers of the Light,' to use an
occult term--and compare the work of those days with the results of this
day, and think upon all it may yet be, it is with a feeling of profound
astonishment, not unmixed with admiring envy, that I regard the young
scientist beginning a career so filled with possibilities and future
discoveries. It seems as if I, the painter, walked upon a highway
tramped down by countless travellers, leading to an end definite and
unavoidable, while he has before him only a little distance marked out,
with a vast country to explore, as his mind and genius may best
determine.
Many years ago my father took it into his head to begin a photographic
business. He did not know much about it himself, although he had a good
knowledge of chemistry; but he was an enthusiast in experiments and a
credulous believer in the honesty of mankind. Therefore, through the
advice of a friend, he built a glass-house, bought some cameras and
chemicals (it was in the wet-plate days), laid in a stock of
handsomely-designed mounts, &c., and advertised for an operator.
I dare say a great number of photographers have gone through a similar
experience, thinking, as he did, that this was about the whole which was
required to start a future flourishing business, and that the operator,
like the cameras, would be equally easy to procure, provided the money
was there to pay for them.
He bought cameras and hired operators. I think he got through about a
dozen of the one, and about half a hundred of the other, before he woke
up to the knowledge that something else was required before the business
could be built up on a firm basis or the public satisfied with the
efforts made to please them.
In those days backgrounds and accessories were not greatly considered as
the means towards an artistic end. One plain background and one a little
complicated were all that the operator considered needful, with a carved
chair or fluted pilaster; and thus the multitude were turned out with a
set, fixed stare, full front, bolt upright. If male, a lenient
photographer might permit one leg to cross the other by way of ease. The
female portion generally sat with hands meekly crossed over the lap and
a curtain falling gracefully on one side, like the heroic portraits of
the times of Sir Benjamin West.
When I had painted the fancy background--a room with a bay-window partly
open, revealing an Italian lake with a 'palace lifting to eternal
summer' its (half concealed) 'marble walls'--and got a house painter to
do the plain subject, we were ready to begin work, and to turn out your
Dick and Harry by the rose-tinted dozen, all as visitors to that
wire-work painted Italian lake. I had not then learned the value of
suggestive mystery, nor did I do justice to the imagination of our
public. I considered then that a fact could not be too plainly told--a
mistake often committed by ardent youth.
We changed our operators rapidly. Some had been old positive men, who
had no sympathy with the negative system, therefore, out of principle,
spoilt all the negatives they took; some had a weakness for ardent
spirits and strong tobacco while at work, and, in consequence, made
mistakes with their solutions; others, again, developed such an
extraordinary appetite for gold and silver, that the most profitable
business in the world could never have supplied the baths they required
to go on with. We tried a number of wandering workers, who, having
pawned their own stock-in-trade, came with arms out at elbow, and stayed
with us just long enough to do away with most of our stock as well as
with the feebly growing trade; yet my father held out, tried another and
another, and sunk a lot of money in that glass-house, before he
eventually came to the conclusion that it would be much more
satisfactory and less expensive to devote it entirely to plants and the
growing of grape-vines.
While those experiments were going on, I was picking up some stray
crumbs of knowledge. My artistic instincts and a fair education made me
revolt against that instrument of torture, the head-rest, and I tried to
pose the sitters a little more naturally than by the rigid regimental
rule. Of course, the time required for the sitter to remain steady in
those wet-plate days necessitated a rest of some sort, so, considering
all things, I suppose they took portraits then passably well; one point
to be specially regarded with regret being, that the young photographer
had more chance of learning the details of his trade thoroughly than he
has now, with all the facilities for ease and comfort in the prepared
dry-plate processes, for I contend that in all trades and professions a
man to be thorough ought to learn the way to prepare his materials from
the very foundation, as well as to be able to work with them after they
are ready for his hand, as the old Masters did with their canvases and
colours, and the old positive men with their collodion and other
chemicals. We must look back with the same admiration on these men
fighting so manfully with difficulties, now all smoothed away by our
instantaneous plate manufacturers, as a modern tourist crossing the
Atlantic (saloon fashion) may recall the same passage made by
Christopher Columbus in his fishing-boat of a Spanish galley.
Of the many experimentalists migrating through that glass-house during
their earthly pilgrimages and its photographic existence, I can recall
two who stand out most prominently; one an Italian pantomimist and
Jack-of-all-trades, who did the most damage in the shortest space of
time, and the other a German atheistic disciple of Voltaire, scouter of
Providence and blind believer in chance, who stayed the longest, and
taught me, as the serpent of old did Mother Eve, the greatest amount of
good and evil.
The pantomimist brought with him a wife and a large family, squatted
upon the premises _en masse_, and cleared it out as completely as a
cloud of locusts are said to demolish the track of country they settle
upon; he was an ingratiating man, who could do almost anything from
pitch-and-toss down to swallowing a camera, stand and all; and his
fascinating family were equally handy in the art of stowing away. If the
grocer's and butcher's bills had not, after their hasty departure, come
in to be settled by my father, I should have been convinced that they
devoured nitrate of silver for their dinner, aiding the digestion by a
dessert of chloride of gold, so much of those two articles was consumed
during that brief visit to the paternal roof of these interesting and
noble refugees.
The little German could work, but objected strongly to my introducing
any novelties in the way of pose or accessories. He had been brought up
to regard a fluted pilaster as a necessity of life, likewise a
cushioned, carved easy chair with the marble palace, whether the sitter
was a clerk or a clodhopper; there they stood, full front, fixed at
attention, with an excruciating and ghastly grin distorting each face,
flooded with light; the pilaster on the right, easy chair on the left,
and the smiling lake with its startling detail all in the foreground,
and brought out regardless of consistency or sentiment. I used to argue
the point, and strive to surround a sitter with the accessories to which
his daily occupations entitled him, but without avail; the operator
would turn me off with a piece of Voltairean philosophy, or, what was
harder to endure, a smack on the ear, the artist and the photographer
standing then as distinctly apart as now they are so closely united.
But, with all his faults, he was a good chemist and a reader of books;
had he been less of an investigator he might have been more of an
artist, but so long as he could overcome the chemical changes in his
baths and emulsions, conquer fogs and frillings, and produce a clear,
undeniable likeness, he rested on his laurels, saved his money, and
blasphemed creation. Twice a year he took a week's leave of absence,
during which time I posed sitters to my entire satisfaction, and ruined
plates innumerable. These holidays he invariably devoted to the
racecourse; ridiculing a God, he worshipped Dame Fortune; put his entire
half-year's savings, without fail, on the wrong horse, got kicked about
by the welshers, and returned to his duty ornamented with a pair of
blackened eyes and bruised frontispiece, a sadder but never a wiser man;
his faith in his particular crotchets being as pathetic and unbounded as
was his utter disbelief in a future state.
In those early days photographers did not trouble themselves much about
light and shadow--_i.e._ the subtleties and refinements of light and
shadow. To me, an artist, the sight of a good daguerreotype, with its
silver lustre, soft light, and indefinite masses of shadow, is
infinitely superior to the crude attempts at _carte_-printing in its
early stages; the finest studio work of to-day harks back to those
chance effects of imperfect knowledge, or time-workings, as the great
painter strives to cultivate the freshness of early attempts, or the
mellowing upon the canvases of the old painters. I have seen effects hit
by chance from young pupils, who regarded them as failures through want
of experience, which I would give a great deal to have been able to
imitate; and so, the longer a man lives, thinks, and works, the more
eagerly he watches immature attempts, and the more he can learn from
seeming failures; for when a man is struggling with all his might to get
at an object, he is wrestling with an angel, as Jacob did, and though he
may be lamed, as Jacob was lamed, yet the failure is so illuminated with
a divine light that success may be read between the lines. He thinks he
has failed, and that the ground is strewn only with the shattered pieces
of his frail armour, whereas it is covered with the jewels which he has
torn from his mighty antagonist; as he lies back panting and oblivious
from exhaustion, he can see nothing of all this, but to the onlooker it
seems a triumph, to the after-gleaners it means success.
You all know from experience how photography has grown, what giant
strides it has made year after year, and how it is marching on. First a
shadow on a metal plate; an impression upon glass, when all that art
attempted was a little coloured powder to give it a life-like look; a
staring print upon paper, where art sometimes stepped in and painted
over. Then the modelling upon the negative, where art must reign
supreme, where anatomy must be studied and mind dominate, and which, as
far as I can see, has no ending in the way of possibilities. There is no
need for a man to use paints and canvases to write artist, in the
fullest sense of the term, after his name, if he is master of the art of
manipulating a negative; here art begins, after the posing, and has a
delicate and very great mission to fulfil.
When I think upon the vastness of this field where an artist may wander
at will, and how little really has yet been done in comparison to what
may be done, I could almost wish that this had been my lot in life
rather than what it is. Ambition! why, a man may have the desires of a
Napoleon, and yet find relief for them all in the great art of
remodelling: but of that anon.
POSING
It is a very difficult matter to take a point in the career of a
photograph--from the moment the sitter enters the studio until the
_carte_ is packed up--where art does not occupy the principal share. To
begin when the sitter enters, and the artist looks upon him or her, as
the case may be, as a subject upon which to expend all his skill,
imagination, and brain force--in somewhat the same sense as a subject
painter regards his model, so the photographic artist ought to regard
his sitter; yet in somewhat of a reverse sense also; for whereas the
painter suits his model to his subject, and therefore has the easier
task, that of working out a preconceived idea, the photographic artist
must be an impromptu man--he must improvise his subject to suit his
sitter. To a true artist the strain upon the reflective and imaginative
faculties must be tremendous, for he needs to vary and strike subjects
for every sitter who enters; and yet this is his imperative duty if he
is an enthusiast in his art, which all great photographers must be.
It has amused me often to hear painters attempt to sneer at the
photographer who called himself an artist: painters who are content with
one or two subject ideas for twelve months, resting with an air of
infinite superiority upon this painfully conceived and, in many cases,
rather stale idea, and gazing down from the stucco pedestal of their own
arrogance upon the photographic artist with his ten and often twenty
ideas per day! Of course I understand that they, the single-idea men, do
this through ignorance and want of due reflection, and that the more
barren they are themselves, the more they are likely to sneer at the
fertility of others; this I take to be one of the natural laws of
nature.
A sitter enters--a lady, young, good-looking, and handsomely dressed, to
meet another young, good-looking lady just going out. Fashion rules both
fair subjects much in the same way as regards costume; a change of
colour perhaps, but cut in much the same tyrannical style. The colour
may make a slight difference in the two photographs, yet not sufficient
to redeem the artist, who has only light and shadow to work with, if he
cannot strike out something in the posing and accessories to
individualise the different subjects or sitters. But the photographic
artist, perhaps, has had six or seven young ladies, similarly dressed,
one after another, during that forenoon, each sitter with her own ideas
how she ought to be taken--ideas gleaned from someone else's pose, or
something she has seen in a shop window or an album--ideas which the
original instincts of the artist rebel against. The same may be said of
the portrait painter, only that he has days, sometimes weeks, to study
his subject, whereas the photographer is only allowed moments to collect
his well-nigh scattered faculties. Again, the painter has variety of
colour with which to cover over a repetition of design; but with black
and white, a repetition will be at once discovered. This I mention as
one only of many difficulties besetting the studio of a photographic
artist from the moment the sitter enters, which renders his task all the
more harassing, and which cannot trouble the layer-on of colours.
A true photographer seems to me to rank with, and resemble, the
troubadours of the middle ages, poets who poured out their impromptu
verses to the call of the audience. He ought to be a reader of faces--a
close scrutiniser of the inner workings of the subject before him; catch
with an eagle glance the peculiarities of gait, the tricks of motion;
and be gifted with the rare discrimination which can separate the
natural habits from the society affectations. I think a photographer
ought never to be in the studio when the sitter first enters. He or she
ought to be left a little time alone, or rather, a special chamber ought
to be set apart where the sitter may enter, with artistic objects to
attract the attention placed about the room, while the artist, for a few
moments, from an unseen point, may watch and study his subjects when
they think themselves unobserved; afterwards let an employé enter and
address the sitter while the photographer still watches from his point
of observation, by which means he may judge and learn what is the
difference between the sitter when alone and when in society. And so he
may wait, after the instantaneous plate is in the camera, for the moment
when the sitter unconsciously looks natural, to flash the light upon her
or him; indeed, I have thought if the studios could be so constructed
that the operator need never enter the room at all, but have the camera
so adjusted from an outside room that the sitters might not know the
moment they were taken, it would be best--for, to me, naturalism is
always before even a first-class sighted likeness. However, if the
photographer knows the peculiarities of his sitter, and these be comely
peculiarities, he will pose so as to bring them sufficiently out for his
purpose.
There are many rules laid down by Rubens, Titian, Reynolds, and other
masters for the composition and arrangement of pictures; but of all the
stiff, conventional laws laid down, I incline to the jerky, spirited,
and contradictory sentences of the American painter, William Hunt, in
his 'Talks about Art,' for I never yet knew a law in art which ought not
to be ruled by circumstances and the good taste of the artist. The
moment a man allows a law to govern him, independent of the great law of
reason, he becomes a feeble imitator, and no longer dares launch out
into the unknown regions of originality.
Of course, it is strictly necessary to learn all about rules before we
dare infringe upon them, for our own convenience and the good of our
object, the first and great consideration of the artist, whether of the
brush or of the lens. We must learn the laws of lines and directions--we
must know exactly how far we dare intrude the angles or blend the orders
without being accused of barbarism; yet, to me, there is nothing so
delightful as to fling a defiance in the face of time-worn laws, if my
art knowledge and common sense acquits me of sin in the matter of
taste--_i.e._ my own ideal of what taste ought to be, not Michael
Angelo's, or Titian's, or Reynolds'. Knowing their habits by heart, I
would not hesitate to turn my back upon them if they did not lie in the
lines of my own observations of the multitudinous and ever-crossing laws
of nature.
Still, I would have the artist learn all those laws. As the doctor
studies botany, so would I have the photographer learn thoroughly the
laws of chemistry, physiognomy, and face anatomy, which alone can make
him master of his great profession; for no man can defy a law who only
knows the half of its capabilities and powers. The object in art
justifies the means always; but we must not use illegitimate if
legitimate means will answer the same end.
In arranging a sitter or model, both painters and photographers are apt
to do just a little too much--adjusting this fold and planting that
accessory so as to get them within the form they have determined. I like
purity of style as well as anyone, yet it is very disgusting to hear all
the twaddle talked about fine lines of direction, ellipses, pyramids,
and serpentine lines. The painter or photographer who cannot thank God
for a lucky chance or an accidental fold is at the best only a smart
mechanic, and no artist.
My advice in posing would be:--Try to arrange as little as possible.
Leave well as much alone as you can, for, depend upon it, all your
adjusting will never better what chance and nature have arranged between
them for your use, but will only tire out the subject and render the
picture artificial. If not according to your preconceived ideas, accept
the change as something better, and work your best upon it as a servant
who has got a new task set by a great and unquestionable mistress.
LIGHTING
After posing comes the lighting up of your picture. This portion of the
art of photography has become so very far advanced, and there are still
so many difficulties in the way of perfect control, that I feel a
little timid about suggesting any improvement, lest I should be met by
the scientific reply that the thing is not possible; and yet I have such
faith in the future of photography that I do not consider anything
impossible to the operator who flings his whole soul into the discovery
of nature's secrets. 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.
In painting, for instance, the great duty of the worker is to have one
pure light as small as possible as a focussing point for the eye to go
out to first, with a point of darkness to balance that light, as the
light is more striking than the dark. A very small spot of white will
serve as a balance to a larger proportion of black, so the wise painter
is very chary of his pure white.
In landscape this rule is exactly the same, grey predominating in its
various degrees over all. Of course I am aware that in landscape
photography we have _as yet_ no means of controlling the lens, that
objects must just be reproduced as they stand, and that the utmost the
artist can do is to choose a good stand-point with a favourable light,
and make the best of it. Yet I foresee the time when the operator shall
have instruments so constructed that he will be able to leave out what
is objectionable by means of shades and blinds for the plate, so that
he may do as the painter does--alter and transfer his foreground as he
pleases.
Inside, the operator has the light more at his control, with his
shutters, blinds, tissue-paper fans, and other contrivances to throw the
shadow over what portion of the picture he wishes; and yet, with all the
softening of harsh lines and gentle mergings of shadows, he has not
nearly reached the inner circle of light and shade yet. There are lenses
still to be manufactured which will penetrate to a deeper shadow than he
has yet attained, deep although he may have gone in that direction;
lenses which will wait and not over expose the highest lights until the
deepest depth has been gained. With remodelling, it is now easy to make
light; and what the photographer ought to aim at are the greys, or
half-tones, and the blacks, leaving all dead lights and subtle
gradations towards light for the remodeller.
Grey is a very precious as well as a plentiful quality in nature; beyond
the point where light streams from, we seldom, in fact never, see white,
and even the point of light is blended with gradations of prismatic
flashes. There are also throughout nature great spaces; in spite of the
multiplicity of detail, to me nature seems to delight in isolation. Take
what you please, as an example,--a street scene crowded with
people,--what is it to the looker out of a window? Simply dark masses
(black always predominates in an English crowd), with here and there
intersections of space; if you look for it, you will find detail enough,
but you must look for it. The general appearances are simple masses of
shadow under you, drifting out to the grey, with gradations of grey
isolation all round. Take landscape, the ocean in turmoil--grey
stretches, gradating from deeper to lighter tones. A mountain and lake
scene: the sea-gull coming inland from the stormy North Sea is the only
speck of white we trace throughout it, with the vulture or crow looking
jet-black as it intercepts the mellow light.
Space and half-tones seem to me the two great qualities to be sought
after by the artist; in focussing, avoid sharp or high lights, but seek
to pierce and collect as large and full masses of shadow as your tricks
and appliances can give you. A clear and sunless day outside for
landscape work, that sort of lustre which drifts soft shadows under
trees, and causes the distance to float away indefinitely, where detail
is brought out by under-tones, and high lights are left to the
remodeller.
So with figures; as the subject sits or stands, pour all your light upon
the obstruction, so as to give depth in the shadow, blend in accessories
with the figure and background with reflected lights, just enough to
redeem blackness, then soften over the high lights, so that in the
negative there is not a single white, all grey, even to the cambric
handkerchief carelessly left out of the pocket--although I trust no
operator of to-day ever will permit his subject to exhibit such a speck
of vulgarity. I would have all such objects as white flowers, lace, or
handkerchief changed, or a dye kept on the premises to stain them brown
before the negative was taken, so that nothing could be lighter than the
hands or face, unless, like Rubens' work, the subject was to be seen
dark against white, in which case the white ought to surround the
object, never to cut it in two.
In portraits, as yet, the art of beauty seems to be the ruling idea of
the operator; court favourites such as those of Sir Thomas Lawrence and
Sir Joshua Reynolds are the examples set before the photographer. To
flatter the subject is what both subject and worker seem to strive
after; when they look to Rembrandt it is for a shadow picture, which,
by the way, is no more Rembrandtesque than it is Rubenesque. Rembrandt
did not make shadows like the shadow portraits, so called; look at his
etchings and works and you will see what I mean. Rembrandt's lights were
not shiny whites, but tender tones, as his shadows were not blots of
dark, but gradations of depth.
There is a portrait of Thomas Carlyle by James McNeill Whistler, where
the old sage is sitting against a grey background with a perfect
simplicity of space, which is nearer to the work of Rembrandt than
anything I have seen since that grand old Dutchman passed to glory.
RETOUCHING
Before concluding my remarks on the negative, I feel the necessity of
devoting a few moments to the great art of retouching--the portion of
photography at present too much entrusted to the charge of young ladies;
but, if the photographer in any department of the science deserves the
name of artist, it is here, when with his pencil he begins to create.
I thought when I began to write that I had little to say on photography,
but now that I have got into the spirit of the subject, the
possibilities, utilities, and various uses of photography start out
before me from the chaos of unthought creation, all importuning me to
take them up, one after the other, like a legion of undressed skeletons:
photography as connected with etching, wood-engraving, lithography,
zincography, typography, and a dozen other uses where photography is not
only united in marriage to art, but must be regarded as the
husband--_i.e._ the leading spirit, rather than the wife, in the
indissoluble bond; but these for the present I must push back into their
vague home, until I can at a future time take them up by themselves,
which I trust to do, as they are far too important to tack on as a fag
end to this chapter; yet before I close I must speak of the negative
after it has been developed.
It is the misfortune of all large and prosperous businesses that, as in
the making of a pin, the establishment has to be divided into
departments--the poser, not the operator--and so the plate has to go
through different hands. It is a pity, but I see no way to avoid the
evil, except in special cases, where the artist can afford time to
follow up his work personally from the first to the last stage. Were
time and money no object, I would have each man or woman assistant in
the photographic studio qualified to pose, focus, develop, retouch,
print, and mount, with a complete knowledge of all the branches, and a
thorough artistic knowledge besides. I would also have them all consider
nothing too trivial for their talents in the progress of the photograph,
but each to take alternately their turn at the different departments
with their own plates; without this I cannot see how the art enthusiasm,
which a really good photograph requires, can be kindled and kept up. I
think modest photographers in country places, loving their profession,
and not troubled with too many commissions, have a better chance, if
possessed of equal talents, of reaching perfection than their bustled
and prosperous town brethren; in the same sense that I consider the
painter, who has genius, to paint better pictures when he is selling for
twenty pounds than when he is hunted after and getting two thousand
pounds--but this is a matter of opinion.
I know also that it was long considered by some professional men to be
false art to touch a plate after developing, as it is sometimes still
regarded as wrong for an artist to use the compasses or straight-edge to
save time with a drawing, but I consider these as silly prejudices, to
laugh at. Personally, I would not hesitate for a moment to use either a
pair of compasses, a straight-edge, or a photograph, if the so doing
served me better than my eye, or my sketch, in the making of my picture;
neither would I hesitate to call the man a fool who objected to me doing
so on the ground that it was not legitimate art.
Retouching is exactly the same work on the negative as if the artist sat
down before any other material. Upon it, if he has the genius, he can do
almost anything, so that he has shadow enough as a basis. Here he
becomes, as I have said, the creator, and of all the different
operations of a negative, this is the portion where the artist stands
out most prominently and proves what stuff he or she is made of. There
is no end to the variety of work they may introduce as they work
on--grains to look like engravings, hatchings, stippling, brush work. It
is not enough to be able to remove spots and blemishes, or soften off
harsh contrasts; girls mostly get up to this mark of excellence, and
produce those smooth, meaningless, pleasant portraits of everyday life.
The retoucher must learn to keep an expression of the negative, or make
one if not there, and this is the lofty calling of a true retoucher. He
must put a soul into his model, else he cannot call himself an artist
any more than the painter can claim the title who only daubs potboilers.
But if the retoucher can do this, and has art enough in himself to
prefer soul to beauty or beautifying, then he has as much claim to call
himself a painter or an artist (if he prefers that title) as any R.A. in
the clique divine.
Expression, or soul, is what photographers are as yet deficient in, and
that is the province of the retoucher. I want to see a photographer rise
above the prejudice of the flattery-loving public, and lead them by
intensity: give to the public faces ugly as Rembrandt's portraits, yet
pregnant with character. I want to see seams, and wrinkles, and warts,
as the Great Creator left them--indexes to the wearer's character--and
not doll faces, which simper and mean nothing. I want noses in all their
varieties, with their own individuality intensified; cheek-bones
standing out as they may be in the originals. I want men and women sent
down to posterity as they are and not as they would like to be; for I
never yet saw a face in its natural state that I could call ugly,
although I have seen faces made hideous by rouge, and cosmetics, and
false eyebrows, and also by the retouching which they were themselves so
delighted about.
Vice and crime darken the souls which sit behind the eyes--make chins
hard, and lips thin or coarse--destroy curves which are upon all lips
when innocent; yet, to me, the most demoniac face that ever peered out
upon a haunting world is better in its sombre gloom than that same face
smoothed by a bad or mechanical retoucher. Beauty is expression, not
chiselled features. A baby is not beautiful until it can notice its
mother; then the meaningless bit of flesh is lighted up with a ray from
heaven. That God-beam the photographer must catch; yet it is not a
smooth surface, but a light breaking through torn-up cloud mists.
The other day I saw the photograph of a child, supposed to be a city
waif. She was bare-footed and bare-armed, with a rent in her
_pinafore_--a city waif with a pinafore! The photographer had studied
his lines, and posed his model according to the rules he had learnt;
everything was in its right place about that picture, but, like the
mountains about Borrowdale, just a little too exactly as they ought to
be. He had taken the trouble of dirtying the hands and face and legs,
but I saw at a glance that, although it was all right according to art,
it was not all right according to nature. She was not a real city waif,
and to me, who had seen the real article, very far from it.
In Edinburgh, one winter morning, I saw a picture that needed no
adjusting, only the camera, to render it immortal--a man out of work,
saying good-bye to his wife and child before he went on the tramp. Where
the Old Cross of Edinburgh used to stand (before the new malformation
was put up), at its base in the High Street they stood--that group of
two, with the speck of humanity in her arms; the man, in shirt sleeves,
leaning against the railings, snow-laden, with his shoeless feet
blue-black against the mud-coloured snow on the pavement. In his left
hand he held a very small bundle, roughly bound in a red spotted rag of
a handkerchief, while with the tattered sleeves of his dirty shirt he
was attempting to wipe the eyes of the child, that poor little pinched
and smeared-faced baby, who was crying with hunger and cold. The mother
who held it in her thin arms had turned her face from her husband to
where I could see it as I passed by. She was oblivious to spectators in
the silent abandonment of her own woe. A wisp of fair hair fell down
from the old bashed hat upon her head, and hung against her
clay-coloured cheek. Two tears, half congealed, lay just above the
quivering lips. But there were no words of parting passing between those
two.
In London one night, in the East-end, about the month of May, I saw
another picture. It was down by the side of a hoarding covered over with
gay-coloured placards, and over which a lamp shone. A man, a woman, and
a little girl all huddled in a confused mass together. I could not see
the faces, for they were hidden on their breasts, but I saw limp hands
lying on the pavement, and the light night wind fluttered shreds of rags
about. Presently I beheld amongst the passers a woman stop to look at
them--one of those outcasts, all the more pathetic for the furs and
silks that enveloped her. She stooped down to put a sixpence into the
crouching figure's open hand, and for a moment bistre rags and cardinal
silk flounce fluttered together; then she passed on to her sin, leaving
them in their misery. The hand closed on the coin instinctively, but the
brain was too apathetic to take in the significance of the gift all at
once. A moment or two passed as I watched, then I saw the hand slowly
lifted and the head listlessly raised; there was a dazed look into the
palm, then a start into life, and, woman-like, a clutch at the arm of
her husband. Then both heads were lifted to the light, and I caught an
expression of wolfish joy on the faces, which I thought must have
condoned for a deal of vice on the part of that unreclaimed Magdalen, as
the pair staggered to their feet and dragged off the little one to where
they could buy sixpence-worth of oblivion.
These were two pictures which required no arranging of lines or
alteration of lighting up, although faulty according to art, perhaps.
The humanity about them redeemed them; and it is pictures like these, to
be found every hour, which the artist--be he painter or
photographer--only requires to go out and secure, to make art immortal.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF WORKING HORSES
(_From a photograph by John Foster of Coldstream_)]