COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY. 



Bv Sir William J. Herschel. 



The attempt to reproduce the natural colors of objects in a picture 

 of them by means of photography may be regarded, according to a 

 man's fancy, either as a confession of weakness — of lack of artistic- 

 power in oneself — or as a laudable ambition to invoke the powers of 

 nature to do what, with all human skill, no artist can ever expect to 

 do or ever claims to do. The artist, whether of the pencil or of the 

 palette, has a liberty of expression which must forever make him 

 master of the spirits of men when they seek the aid of painting or 

 drawing to represent any scene to their senses. He alone understands 

 the spirit that seeks his aid. He alone knows how to minister to it 

 in the way that will most delight and instruct it. God has given him 

 a great wealth of materials and the incomparable gift of genius in his 

 use of them to interpret a scene to his fellow-man. If he fails, as he 

 often does, in his task, that is no more than human frailty involves. 

 When he succeeds he has given us a joy which we never dream of 

 attaining in any other way short of once more beholding the object of 

 our desires as we saw it in some happy moment of our lives. I am 

 speaking, of course, only of realities and not of poetical or ideal art. 



No one can be more conscious of the vast interval that lies between 

 himself and the true artist than the humble follower of nature along 

 the paths of color photography. To describe his position as a student 

 fully and justly would occupy more time than you can spare me; but 

 of this I am confident, that no artist can have his feelings more keenly 

 cultivated, his appreciation of the delicacies of hue and of shading- 

 more exalted, or his ambition to equal nature more excited by the first 

 fruits of his labors than the patient, watchful handler of the camera 

 and its adjuncts. The artist, indeed, stands at a strange disadvantage 

 here. No joy can ever reach him which he has not, in the richness of 

 his imagination, already tasted before he meets it face to face on his 

 canvas. But who that has hung in eager expectation over the grow- 

 ing wonders of the sensitive plate would exchange his happiness when 



"Presidential address by Sir William J. Herschel, Bart., to the sixteenth annual 

 meeting of the photographic convention of the United Kingdom, Oxford, July 8, 

 1901. Reprinted from the British Journal of Photography, July 12, 1901, pp. 439-441. 



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