January 7, 1892] 



NATURE 



22 



Animal painters will find equally useful the instantaneous 

 photooraphs which Mr. Muybridge and Mr. Anschiitz 

 have obtained from domestic and wild animals. 



Even on breakers in a stormy sea the camera has been 

 employed with surprising success. In making use of 

 these photographs, painters should, however, remember 

 that the human eye cannot see the waves as a rapid 

 plate does, and beware of producing a picture which in 

 certain respects would be quite as incorrect as the clock 

 which appears to have been stopped, or the man stumbling 

 over his own feet. 



Finally, the traditional representation of lightning in 

 the shape of a fiery zigzag has been recently proved by 

 Mr. Shelford Bidwell, on the evidence of two hundred 

 instantaneous photographs, to be just as wrong as the tra- 

 ditional picture of a racing horse. Mr. Eric Stuart Bruce 

 endeavours to vindicate the zigzag by taking it for a 

 reflection on cumulus clouds ; ^ it is, however, difficult to 

 understand how its sharp angles can be accounted for in 

 this way. 



Prof, von Briicke has devoted a special essay to the rules 

 for the artistic rendering of motion, which, together with 

 the laws on the combination of colours, have at all times 

 been unconsciously followed by the great masters. 



A cultivated and artistically gifted eye, supported 

 by sufficient technical knowledge, was always able to 

 compose genuine works of art in photography, as Mrs. 

 Cameron long ago proved. In our days, Dr. Vianna de 

 Lima has shown how this branch of art has been 

 advanced and extended by instantaneous photography. 

 It contributes a solution to Conti's question in Lessing's 

 " Emilia Galotti " — whether Raphael, had he been born 

 without hands, would not the less have been the greatest 

 of painters. The photographic plate has been described 

 as the true retina of the philosopher ; and one might 

 add, of the artist, if it were not unluckily almost colour- 

 blind. Unfortunately, theoretical reasons which experience 

 will hardly contradict render it highly improbable that 

 the expectations still entertained by artists and the 

 general public, with regard to photography in natural 

 colours, will ever be realized. 



Whether photography does not act unfavourably on 

 the reproductive arts, such as engraving, lithography, and 

 woodcutting, by taking their place to an increasing 

 extent, remains to be proved. Its fidelity is certainly 

 such as, in a certain sense, to lower the value of the 

 original drawings of old masters, by making them 

 common property. An exhibition, arranged by one of 

 our art-dealers several years ago, of the best engravings 

 of the " Madonna della Sedia," together with a photograph 

 from the original, first opened our eyes to the extent to 

 which each master has embodied in his copy his own 

 individual conception. But even were photography to 

 cause such a retrogression in the reproductive arts, of 

 what importance would that be, compared to the im- 

 measurable services which, as a means of reproduction 

 itself, it renders art, by disseminating the knowledge and 

 enjoyment of artistic work of all kinds and periods ? No 

 one can fully estimate and appreciate what it has done to 

 beautify and enrich our life, whose memory does not 

 reach back into those, as it were, prehistoric times, 

 "when man did not yet travel by steam, write and speak 

 by lightning, and paint with the sunbeam." 



Is it credible, after all this, that there can be any need 

 of mentioning the benefits derived by art from the 

 study of anatomy.' Has not the "Gladiator"of the Palazzo 

 Borghese given rise to the conjecture that there were 

 anatomical mysteries among the Greek artists, as the 

 only means by which they could have obtained such 

 complete mastery of the nude ? Was it not through in- 

 cessant anatomical studies that Michael Angelo acquired 

 the knowledge necessary for the unprecedented boldness 

 of his attitudes and foreshortenings, which are still a 



I Nature, vol. xlii. pp. 151 and 197. 



source of admiration to anatomists such as Prof. 

 Henke and Prof, von Briicke? Has not provision 

 been made by all Governments that methodically en- 

 courage art, to afford to students an opportunity of 

 training the eye on the dead subject to note what they 

 will have to distinguish under the living skin.? Have 

 not three successive teachers, who afterwards became 

 members of this Academy, been intrusted with this 

 important duty in Berlin ? Finally, do we not possess 

 excellent compendiums of anatomy specially adapted to 

 the use of artists? 



And yet the most renowned English art critic of the 

 day, who in his country enjoys the reputation and 

 veneration of a Lessing, and who lays down the law with 

 even more assurance — Mr. John Ruskin — explicitly forbids 

 his pupils the study of anatomy in his lectures on 

 "The Relation of Natural Science to Art,"' given before 

 the University of Oxford. Even in the preface he de- 

 plores its pernicious influence on Mantegna and Diirer, 

 as contrasted with Botticelli and Holbein, who kept 

 free from it. " The habit of contemplating the anato- 

 mical structure of the human form," he continues, " is 

 not only a hindrance but a degradation, and has been 

 essentially destructive to every school of art in which it 

 has been practised." According to him, it misleads 

 painters, as for instance Diirer, to see and represent 

 nothing in the human face but the skull. The artist 

 should "take every sort of view of animals, in fact, 

 except one — the butcher's view. He is never to think of 

 them as bones and meat." 



It would be waste of time and trouble to refute this 

 false doctrine, and to set forth what an indispensable aid 

 anatomy gives to artists, without which they are left to 

 grope in the dark. It is all very well to trust one's own 

 eyes, but it is better still to know, for instance, how the 

 male and female skeleton differ ; why the kneecap 

 follows the direction of the foot during extension, and 

 not during flexion of the leg ; why the profile of the upper 

 arm during supination of the hand differs from that 

 during pronation ; or how the folds and wrinkles of the 

 face correspond to the muscles beneath Campe's facial 

 angle, though superseded for higher purposes by Prof. 

 Virchow's basal angle, still reveals a world of information. 

 It is hardly conceivable how, without knowledge of the 

 skull, a forehead can be correctly modelled, or the shape 

 of a forehead such as that of the "Jupiter of Otricoli" or 

 the " Hermes" be rightly understood. Of course fanciful 

 exaggeration of anatomical forms may lead to abuse, as 

 is frequently the case with Michael Angelo's successors ; 

 however, there is no better remedy against the Michael 

 Angelesque manner than earnest study of the real. 

 Finally, a superficial knowledge of comparative anatomy 

 helps artists to avoid such errors as an illustrious master 

 once fell into, whogave the hind-leg of a horse one joint too 

 many ; or such as amuses naturalists in the crocodile ot 

 the Fontaine Cuvier near the Jardin des Plantes, which 

 turns its stiff" neck so far back that the snout almost 

 touches the flank. 



We are, however,less surprised at Mr. Ruskin'sopinions, 

 on learning that he similarly prohibits the study of the 

 nude. It is to be confined to those parts of the body 

 which health, custom, and decency permit to be left un- 

 covered, a restriction which certainly renders anatomical 

 studies somewhat superfluous. It is satisfactory to think 

 that decency, custom, and health allowed the ancient 

 Greeks more liberty in this respect. Fortunately, the 

 English department of the Berlin International Exhibition 

 four years ago has convinced us that Mr. Ruskin's 

 dangerous paradoxes do not yet generally prevail, and 

 that we are free to forget them in our admiration of Mr. 

 Alma Tadema's and Mr. Herkomer's paintings. Nor 

 could Mr. Walter Crane's charming illustrations, the 



I " The Eagle's N'est : Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science 

 to Art." 1887. 



NO. 



I I 58, VOL. 45] 



