Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Photographic portraiture
PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITURE.
Ten years ago, when the miniature room of the Royal Academy used to be mobbed by fair women, bent either upon criticising their friends or furtively admiring their own portraits, who could have foreseen that Sol was about to wrest the pencil from the hand of the cunning limner, and annihilate one of the oldest callings connected with the Fine Arts? The income of a Thorburn or a Ross seemed as assured as that of an archbishop against change or curtailment, and no high-born lady’s boudoir was complete without a portrait of herself paid for at a princely price. The introduction of the daguerreotype process, some five-and-twenty years ago, seemed only to fix more firmly the claims of the brush against the art of the photographer. Tompkins or Hopkins may submit to go down to posterity as livid corpse-like personages; but the Lady Blanche or the fair Geraldine forbid it. Oh Heavens! Presently, however, Fox Talbot appeared upon the scene, and the dull metal, which only enabled you to see your friend glaring at you at an almost impossible angle, gave way to photography, in which the image was fixed upon paper. The collodion process followed, and from this moment the occupation of the miniature-painter was gone. A truer draughtsman than either Thorburn, Ross, or Cooper of old, had appeared on the scene, and year by year we looked with a diminished interest for England’s beauties in the miniature room of the Royal Academy screen.
Our International Exhibitions, in these days of rapid progress, serve the purpose of estimating our progress since the last decade; and in no department of science or industrial art has such an advance been made, between the years 1851 and 1862, as in that of photography. In the former year, a few portraits exhibited by Messrs. Henneman of Regent Street, who at that time held the exclusive patent to produce photographs by Mr. Fox Talbot’s process, represented the art as it then existed. In 1862, the splendid collection of sun-pictures in the glass-room of the International, excited the admiration of visitors to such a degree, that exclamations were heard on all hands against the Council for placing them in such an out-of-the-way place in the building.
Photography has now become an institution; its professors are counted by the thousand in the Metropolis alone, and portraits once obtainable only by the rich, now hang on the walls of the meanest cottage. Take a walk down the New Cut, Seven Dials, or any other unsavoury locality, and there you will see how Sally the cook, and Billy the potman, or the wooden visage of Policeman X, are exhibited to an admiring New Cut circle; and who shall say that, if not quite so fine, yet that they do not look far more natural than “portraits in this style, 10s. 6d.,” of a dozen years ago?
But every art that ministers to the vanities of the public is liable every now and then to run riot in matters of taste, and so it is with photographic portraiture. Let us take the carte de visite mania for example, and turn over the Album at home, which by mutual exchanges contains all our friends. There is Mrs. Jones, for instance, who does the honours of her little semi-detached villa so well: how does she come to stand in that park-like pleasure-ground, when we know that her belongings and surroundings don’t warrant more than a little back-garden big enough to grow a few crocuses? Or Miss Brown, again, why should she shiver in a ball-dress on a verandah, and why should we be called upon—instead of looking at her good honest face—to have our attention called away to the lake-like prospect at her back? Then there’s Mr. Robinson, standing in a library with a heap of books put within reach of his hand. Now, all Mr. Robinson’s little world know that he never looked into any book but a ledger in his life. It will be observed that it is the photographic artists who court the lower stratum of the middle class, who most delight in these scenic arrangements, and no doubt they know what they are about. But it sometimes happens that people who ought to know better permit themselves to be made the lay-figures of the photographer’s ideal landscapes. We suppose that besetting evil of society—the love of appearing what we are not—is at the bottom of this small but very prevalent sin. If the class of individuals who love to be surrounded with these fictitious landscapes had the slightest knowledge of art, they would perceive that, independently of the “humbug,” the cutting up of a portrait with balustrades, pillars, and gay parterres is fatal to the effect of the figure which should be the only object to strike the eye. For instance, we saw the other day a carte de visite in which a young lady was represented reading, with her back to an ornamental piece of water, on which two swans were sailing, and appeared to be grubbing with their bills at the sash behind her back. Again, there is a portrait of Her Majesty to be seen in the shop windows, in which she is so posed that a tuft of verdure in the background appears to form a head-dress such as Red Indians wear—the ludicrous effect of which may be imagined. It must be confessed that the Royal Family have fallen into very bad hands, for their photographs are, one and all, slanders upon the Royal Race. There is one of the Queen and Prince Albert standing up looking at each other like two wooden dolls; and there is another of the Princess Beatrice seated upon a table, with her frock so disposed that it appears to form but one piece with the tablecloth, the effect being that this infant of five seems planted upon the full-blown crinoline of a woman of forty. The Heir-apparent and his young fiancée fare no better; indeed, the familiarities taken with the future King and Queen of England are of a far more offensive kind, as they sin against propriety and good taste rather than against artistic rules. What would have been thought of Sir Thomas Lawrence if he had left us portraits of the Prince of Wales and Caroline of Brunswick indulging in those little familiarities which lookers-on good-naturedly avoid seeing? But the Photographer Royal of Bruxelles has not hesitated to take advantage of the natural frankness and amiability of their Royal Highnesses, to pose them in a manner which, to say the least of it, jars on the good taste of the fastidious beholder. Princes of the most exalted rank clasp each other’s hands, we suppose, like other people, and an arm rests as naturally around a Royal neck as it would round a peasant’s; but there is a sense of propriety, without being prudish, about these matters which all understand but this unlucky photographer.
No photographic portrait looks so well as one with a perfectly plain background; and we advise all our readers to avoid those who put us into splendid domains and far-stretching forests, either with or without our will. But there is the question of dressing to sit to the sun just as there would be to a Ross or a Wells—indeed, the sun is more exacting than either of those artists. If the photograph is to be coloured, it matters little what the tint of the costume may be as far as the fidelity of the portrait is concerned; but it is otherwise with those that are to remain plain. For instance, an English officer taken in his uniform is surprised to find that instead of a shade representing red it turns out black. The charming mauve of a lady’s bonnet is transformed into white in the same manner. On the contrary, a yellow dress is represented in a photograph by pure black. The reason of this is that the blue rays of the spectrum (and all the intermediate shades of mauve, purple, puce, lavender, &c., in a more or less degree) act upon the nitrate of silver of the negative in a most powerful manner, whilst the yellow ray does not affect it at all; this may be seen by a visit to the photographer’s room where he prepares his plates, the windows of which are shaded with a yellow blind to prevent the light affecting them. Now, as the positives, or portraits, are printed from the glass negatives by the simple plan of allowing the light to fall through them upon the prepared paper, the lights and shades must be reversed. The moral to be drawn from this little story is, not to indulge in the colours we have mentioned when we visit the photographer. The good sense and the good taste of most ladies lead them to this conclusion, however, without knowing anything of the chemistry of the matter; and black silk is now almost universally worn for photographic purposes. Mind, good reader, it must be silk, not bombazine, or any of the cotton varieties of black, as the admirable effect of silk depends upon its gloss, which makes the garment full of those subdued and reflected lights which give motion and play to the drapery. A dead black cotton or woollen material would be represented by an uniform blotch, like a smear of soot; and a white dress, on the other hand, would appear like a flat film of wax, or a piece of cardboard. A combination of black net over white is, however, very effective; and an admirable softness and depth of colour is given to a photograph by the use of seal-skin, or velvet. This, though but the millinery of the art, is very necessary to be attended to, as otherwise the efforts of the best photographer will be of no avail.
As regards the merits of photography itself versus the pencil, it cannot be gainsaid that, although the sun is a better draughtsman than any human hand, yet there are certain drawbacks connected with it which are of moment. And, first of all, it rarely reproduces the best expression of the highest kind of beauty; in this respect it is certainly inferior to the old miniature. The reason is this. The highest kind of beauty consists in expression—it is the play of features which charms, not the mere beauty of the human mask, unimpassioned by the soul beneath. And this expression is just the thing that photography misses. When a man or woman, and especially when a woman sits to the sun for her portrait, the first thing she does is to make up a face—she can’t help it, my good reader—let the muscles of your mouth play naturally, whilst your friend is daring you to do so, if you can. The consequence is, that the likeness taken of you has either an affected simper, as unlike a natural smile as German silver is like the real argent; or, it is a set and rigid effigy cast in iron. The old portrait-painter proceeded about his business leisurely—no pistolgrams for him. If the sitter should have happened to have made up a face, it relaxed before the artist’s colours were mixed; but the grim camera staring you in the face, and the operator demanding that you “stop as you are,” to say nothing of having your head placed in a vice, put to flight the rippling lines about the mouth, and set the eyes into a stony stare. By making a great many photographs of the same person, the unnatural rigidity of the features, it is true, relaxes; but we fear that the plain photograph never will reproduce a charming face, in which the chief beauty lies in expression. When the beauty, however, depends upon form merely, the photograph is perfect; hence classical faces should seek the sun as the most effective artist.
But art is capable of correcting, to a very large degree, the photographic shortcomings we have spoken of. We have seen many coloured photographs which, taken as a whole, neither Thorburn, Ross, nor Wells could have equalled. The mass of coloured photographs we see about are, we confess, beneath contempt; but the manner in which the artists have worked is alone accountable for their failure. The real excellence of a coloured photograph results from the artist following only the outlines which photography has given him on the paper; but the bungling dauber proceeds to destroy this beautiful drawing by painting with solid colour, which effectually hides all the wonderful delicacy of the sun’s pencil’s touch beneath. We were charmed with nothing at the International Exhibition more than with the coloured photographs of Messrs. Lock and Whitfield, of Regent Street. The transparency and delicacy of touch left nothing to be desired. It is obvious that the artist has obtained his admirable results by the use of the most transparent water-colours alone; hence all the wonderful drawing remains intact, and gives the perfect likeness, which even the most consummate artist of old was apt to miss. From these portraits it is evident that the most pearly greys and the most transparent shadows can be rendered on photographic drawing with perfect truth; and the beauty, too, is there. Mr. Lock evidently can catch the fleeting expression, and fix it for ever with his brush—at least all the hardness so usual in the plain photograph vanishes under his hand; and if a foreigner would like to see what the better class of young English women are like, we should recommend him to look at the glorious faces which he may see in the studio of this firm.
But will these coloured photographs last? asks the reader. Time, we reply, is the only test. We have seen photographs ten years old, and these are as good as the first day they were taken. We see no reason that the chemicals should change to a greater degree than the ivory on which miniature painters were wont to work, and the colours are of course identical in both cases. A new art has arisen, however, in connection with photography, which will possibly satisfy those who are doubtful as to the permanency of photographs produced in the ordinary way. Photographs are now taken on porcelain, plain or coloured, with tints prepared with a vitreous medium, and then burnt in, like an ordinary enamel. These are of course indestructible, as far as fading goes, and they look like the rarest works of Boucher; but they are proportionately expensive, and we do not think they are likely to supersede the method now employed.
We must not omit to mention a very charming compromise between the water-colour art and photography, which Messrs. Lock and Whitfield have brought into fashion. 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.
To some of the many uses to which the art of photography has been lately applied, we shall allude in another paper.