AET AND SCIENCE CLAIMS OF PHOTOGRAPHY. 



41 



Attention was now drawn to the passage from "Wordsworth — 



" Ah then, if mine had been the painter's hand, 

 To express what then I saw, and add the gleam, 

 The light that never was on sea or land. 

 The consecration, and the poet's dream." 



I^ow, if this "light that never was on sea or land" is anything 

 more than poetical license, it is the expression of a dissatisfaction 

 with the delineations of nature as she is, and is, as Ruskin calls it, 

 a craving for the "audacious liberty of that faculty of degrading 

 God's works which man calls his imagination ; " and is an illustra- 

 tion of the position we find continually enforced, that painting 

 receives its perfection from an ideal beauty superior to what is 

 to be found in individual nature. This is maintaining in idea that 

 the artist is greater than the Divine Maker of nature. It is difficult 

 to perceive that any valid objection really exists against combina- 

 tion printing ; or to understand why adding a sky to a landscape 

 from a second negative should be designated a trick. Further, 

 because photography is less plastic than painting, and attempts at 

 pictorial composition therefore all the more difficult, why we should 

 be told that " combining two or more negatives is not a legitimate 

 application of photography." 



On the subject of skies critics seem to overlook one point — that 

 however truthfully a sky maybe photographed in conjunction with 

 a landscape, it rarely happens that it is the best for pictorial effect. 

 It becomes then necessary , in order to give any value to the ])icture, 

 that a carefully selected sky from a second negative be used. 

 Again, there are a vast number of cases in which a slight alteration 

 of the original, for instance, the elimination of some artificial object 

 in the foreground which destroys keeping. The introduction of 

 such figures as may serve to carry on the idea of the picture, &c., 

 &c., may be just the one touch which throws life and vigour into 

 the whole composition. 



The lecturer contended that whilst the painter is allowed to draw 

 on his imagination, and put in groups of pleasing figures where no 

 figures were, and add to the scenery lie paints thoughts sought for 

 in nature, and secured in his sketch book as studies culled here and 

 there, — sunny skies, cattle, trees, rocks, and all that nature and 

 art judiciously selected can furnish to enrich his canvass and 

 enhance his reputation — the photographer, with the conception 

 pre-arranged in liis mind [a sketch is made for every composition 



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