NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 113 



nature itself; because nothing, and no imaginary form or coloring, can 

 equal, or, I might indeed say, approach in beauty what we, if we cafe 

 to look for it, and know how to find it, can find for ourselves in nature. 

 And it is preeminently this earnest desire to seek for and discover the 

 beauties of nature, and the knowledge of how and where to find them 

 that distinguish the artist from the mere painte'r or photographer. . . . 

 If you aim at art in photography, you must study nature, and you must 

 give as faithful a transcript of nature as you can. Suppose a painter 

 were to say, ' Well, I cannot be at the trouble to do skies or clouds to 

 my landscapes ; people must be content with carefully painted fore- 

 grounds,' what should we think of that individual ? who would look at 

 his pictures ? what would the photographer himself say to them ? 

 Then, what does he imagine artists, and all who have a feeling for and 

 a love of nature, think of his photographs ? I hold all such productions 

 to be unfaithful to nature and untrue to art. 



" But in addition to the real feeling for the beautiful, some knowledge 

 is desirable, some study of the works of celebrated painters, in order to 

 know how to combine the various beauties of nature. To give an illus- 

 tration of my meaning: A view may be very beautiful from a certain 

 point, but it might happen that, by moving two or three yards one way 

 or the other, you may make exactly the same view more available, as 

 a picture, by including some object for the foreground, such as a mass 

 of rock, an old gate, the trunk of a tree, or any object that may hap- 

 pen to be within reach. 



" There are many other branches of photography to which I might 

 call your attention, the copying of pictures, photolithography and its 

 various processes, and composition photography. But I am anxious to 

 confine myself to photography in connection with its claims to be con- 

 sidered as a fine art. Composition photography, more than any other, 

 shows how difficult it is to attain really artistic results in photography, 

 and shows most forcibly the weak points of photography in its claims to 

 the rank of a fine art. Wonderful results may be achieved considering 

 the means at our disposal, but the insurmountable difficulty of control- 

 ling the sitter's expression of face, not to mention other minor difficul- 

 ties, will always prevent that class of photography from rising beyond 

 a certain level, and will always remind us that photography has much 

 that is mechanical, and that it is necessary to obtain far greater rapid- 

 ity than any process at present possesses, before composition photography 

 can worthily assist in claiming for photography in general the dignity 

 of a fine art. In conclusion I should strongly recommend an amateur 

 to adopt a rapid process, so as never to have any difficulty in getting 

 life into his pictures. A man in the foreground, a cow, a wagon, and 

 team, give life and reality to a photograph, and are often of the utmost 

 value, and even necessity to the composition of a picture. In the pres- 

 ent state of photography, with the minutiae of the processes carefully 

 laid down by experienced photographers, two or three months' hard 

 study should make any lover of nature and art an accomplished photog- 

 rapher ; and if he knows somewhat of chemistry, or studies it a little at 

 the same time, so much the better. . . I am confident that, by photog- 

 raphy, pictures are to be obtained far superior to anything else ever 

 produced in monochrome ; and any one can obtain these by study, al- 

 ways allowing that they have the feeling and taste for nature and art 

 10* 



