THE CALOTYPE.
There are some two or three slight advantages which real merit has, that fictitious merit has not; among the rest, an especial advantage, which, we think, should recommend it to at least the quieter members of society––the advantage of being unobtrusive and modest. It presses itself much less on public notice than its vagabond antagonist, and makes much less noise; it walks, for a time at least, as if slippered in felt, and leaves the lieges quite at freedom to take notice of it or no, as they may feel inclined. It is content, in its infancy, to thrive in silence. It does not squall in the nursery, to the disturbance of the whole house, like ‘the major roaring for his porridge.’ What, for instance, could be quieter or more modest, in its first stages, than the invention of James Watt? what more obtrusive or noisy, on the contrary, than the invention of Mr. Henson? And we have illustrations of the same truth in our Scottish metropolis at the present moment, that seem in no degree less striking. Phreno-mesmerism and the calotype have been introduced to the Edinburgh public about much the same time; but how very differently have they fared hitherto! A real invention, which bids fair to produce some of the greatest revolutions in the fine arts of which they have ever been the subject, has as yet attracted comparatively little notice; an invention which serves but to demonstrate that the present age, with all its boasted enlightenment, may yet not be very unfitted for the reception of superstitions the most irrational and gross, is 180 largely occupying the attention of the community, and filling column after column in our public prints. We shall venture to take up the quieter invention of the two as the genuine one,––as the invention which will occupy most space a century hence,––and direct the attention of our readers to some of the more striking phenomena which it illustrates, and some of the purposes which it may be yet made to subserve. There are few lovers of art who have looked on the figures or landscapes of a camera obscura without forming the wish that, among the hidden secrets of matter, some means might be discovered for fixing and rendering them permanent. If nature could be made her own limner, if by some magic art the reflection could be fixed upon the mirror, could the picture be other than true? But the wish must have seemed an idle one,––a wish of nearly the same cast as those which all remember to have formed at one happy period of life, in connection with the famous cap and purse of the fairy tale. Could aught seem less probable than that the forms of the external world should be made to convert the pencils of light which they emit into real bona fide pencils, and commence taking their own likenesses? Improbable as the thing may have seemed, however, there were powers in nature of potency enough to effect it, and the newly discovered art of the photographer is simply the art of employing these. The figures and landscapes of the camera obscura can now be fixed and rendered permanent,––not yet in all their various shades of colour, but in a style scarce less striking, and to which the limner, as if by anticipation, has already had recourse. The connoisseur unacquainted with the results of the recent discovery, would decide, if shown a set of photographic impressions, that he had before him the carefully finished drawings in sepia of some great master. The stronger lights, as in sketches done in this colour, present merely the white ground of the paper; a tinge of 181 soft warm brown indicates the lights of lower tone; a deeper and still deeper tinge succeeds, shading by scarce perceptible degrees through all the various gradations, until the darker shades concentrate into an opaque and dingy umber, that almost rivals black in its intensity. We have at the present moment before us––and very wonderful things they certainly are––drawings on which a human pencil was never employed. They are strangely suggestive of the capabilities of the art. Here, for instance, is a scene in George Street,––part of the pavement; and a line of buildings, from the stately erection at the corner of Hanover Street, with its proud Corinthian columns and rich cornice, to Melville’s Monument and the houses which form the eastern side of St. Andrew Square. St. Andrew’s Church rises in the middle distance. The drawing is truth itself; but there are cases in which mere truth might be no great merit: were the truth restricted here to the proportions of the architecture, there could be nothing gained by surveying the transcript, that could not be gained by surveying the originals. In this little brown drawing, however, the truth is truth according to the rules of lineal perspective, unerringly deduced; and from a set of similar drawings, this art of perspective, so important to the artist––which has been so variously taught, and in which so many masters have failed––could be more surely acquired than by any other means. Of all the many treatises yet written on the subject, one of the best was produced by the celebrated Ferguson the astronomer, the sole fruit derived to the fine arts by his twenty years’ application to painting. There are, however, some of his rules arbitrary in their application, and the propriety of which he has not even attempted to demonstrate. Here, for the first time, on this square of paper, have we the data on which perspective may be rendered a certain science. We have but to apply our compasses and rules in order to discover 182 the proportions in which, according to their distances, objects diminish. Mark these columns, for instance. One line prolonged in the line of their architrave, and another line prolonged in the line of their bases, bisect one another in the point of sight fixed in the distant horizon; and in this one important point we find all the other parallel lines of the building converging. The fact, though unknown to the ancients, has been long familiar to the artists of comparatively modern times,––so familiar, indeed, that it forms one of the first lessons of the drawing-master. The rule is a fixed one; but there is another rule equally important, not yet fixed,––that rule of proportion by which to determine the breadth which a certain extent of frontage between these converging lines should occupy. The principle on which the horizontal lines converge is already known, but the principle on which the vertical lines cut these at certain determinate distances is not yet known. It is easy taking the latitudes of the art, if we may so speak, but its longitudes are still to discover. At length, however, have we the lines of discovery indicated: in the architectural drawings of the calotype the perspective is that of nature itself; and to arrive at just conclusions, we have but to measure and compare, and ascertain proportions. One result of the discovery of the calotype will be, we doubt not, the production of completer treatises on perspective than have yet been given to the world. Another very curious result will be, in all probability, a new mode of design for the purposes of the engraver, especially for all the illustrations of books. For a large class of works the labours of the artist bid fair to be restricted to the composition of tableaux vivants, which it will be the part of the photographer to fix, and then transfer to the engraver. To persons of artistical skill at a distance, the suggestion may appear somewhat wild. Such of our readers, however, as have seen the joint productions of Mr. Hill and Mr. Adamson in this department, will, we are convinced, not deem it 183 wild in the least. Compared with the mediocre prints of nine-tenths of the illustrated works now issuing from the press, these productions serve admirably to show how immense the distance between nature and her less skilful imitators. There is a truth, breadth, and power about them which we find in only the highest walks of art, and not often even in these. We have placed a head of Dr. Chalmers taken in this way beside one of the most powerful prints of him yet given to the public, and find from the contrast that the latter, with all its power, is but a mere approximation. There is a skinniness about the lips which is not true to nature; the chin is not brought strongly enough out; the shade beneath the under lip is too broad and too flat; the nose droops, and lacks the firm-set appearance so characteristic of the original; and while the breadth of the forehead is exaggerated, there is scarce justice done to its height. We decide at once in favour of the calotype––it is truth itself; and yet, while the design of the print––a mere approximation as it is––must have cost a man of genius much pains and study, the drawing in brown beside it was but the work of a few seconds: the eye of an accomplished artist determined the attitude of the original, and the light reflected from the form and features accomplished the rest. Were that sketch in brown to be sent to a skilful engraver, he would render it the groundwork of by far the most faithful print which the public has yet seen. And how interesting to have bound up with the writings of this distinguished divine, not a mere print in which there might be deviations from the truth, but the calotype drawing itself! In some future book sale, copies of the Astronomical Discourses with calotype heads of the author prefixed, may be found to bear very high prices indeed. An autograph of Shakespeare has been sold of late for considerably more than an hundred guineas. What price would some early edition of his works bear, 184 with his likeness in calotype fronting the title? Corporations and colleges, nay, courts and governments, would outbid one another in the purchase. Or what would we not give to be permitted to look even on a copy of the Paradise Lost with a calotype portrait of the poet in front––serenely placid in blindness and adversity, solacing himself, with upturned though sightless eyes, amid the sublime visions of the ideal world? How deep the interest which would attach to a copy of Clarendon’s History of the Civil War, with calotypes of all the more remarkable personages who figured in that very remarkable time––Charles, Cromwell, Laud, Henderson, Hampden, Strafford, Falkland, and Selden,––and with these the Wallers and Miltons and Cowleys, their contemporaries and coadjutors! The history of the Reform Bill could still be illustrated after this manner; so also could the history of Roman Catholic Emancipation in Ireland, and the history of our Church Question in Scotland. Even in this department––the department of historic illustrations––we anticipate much and interesting employment for the photographer.
We have two well-marked drawings before us, in which we recognise the capabilities of the art for producing pictures of composition. They are tableaux vivants transferred by the calotype. In the one[Footnote: See [Frontispiece]] a bonneted mechanic rests over his mallet on a tombstone––his one arm bared above his elbow; the other wrapped up in the well-indicated shirt folds, and resting on a piece of grotesque sculpture. There is a powerful sun; the somewhat rigid folds in the dress of coarse stuff are well marked; one half the face is in deep shade, the other in strong light; the churchyard wall throws a broad shadow behind, while in the foreground there is a gracefully chequered breadth of intermingled dark and light in the form of a mass of rank grass and foliage. Had an old thin man of striking figure and features been selected, 185 and some study-worn scholar introduced in front of him, the result would have been a design ready for the engraver when employed in illustrating the Old Mortality of Sir Walter. The other drawing presents a tableau vivant on a larger scale, and of a much deeper interest. It forms one of the groups taken under the eye of Mr. Hill, as materials for the composition of his historic picture. In the centre Dr. Chalmers sits on the Moderator’s chair, and there are grouped round him, as on the platform, some eighteen or twenty of the better known members of the Church, clerical and lay. Nothing can be more admirable than the truthfulness and ease of the figures. Wilkie, in his representations of a crowd, excelled in introducing heads, and hands, and faces, and parts of faces into the interstices behind,––one of the greatest difficulties with which the artist can grapple. Here, however, is the difficulty surmounted––surmounted, too, as if to bear testimony to the genius of the departed––in the style of Wilkie. We may add further, that the great massiveness of the head of Chalmers, compared with the many fine heads around him, is admirably brought out in this drawing.
In glancing over these photographic sketches, one cannot avoid being struck by the silent but impressive eulogium which nature pronounces, through their agency, on the works of the more eminent masters. There is much in seeing nature truthfully, and in registering what are in reality her prominent markings. Artists of a lower order are continually falling into mere mannerisms––peculiarities of style that belong not to nature, but to themselves, just because, contented with acquirement, they cease seeing nature. In order to avoid these mannerisms, there is an eye of fresh observation required––that ability of continuous attention to surrounding phenomena which only superior men possess; and doubtless to this eye of fresh observation, this ability of continuous attention, the masters 186 owed much of their truth and their power. How very truthfully and perseveringly some of them saw, is well illustrated by these photographic drawings. Here, for instance, is a portrait exactly after the manner of Raeburn. There is the same broad freedom of touch; no nice miniature stipplings, as if laid in by the point of a needle––no sharp-edged strokes: all is solid, massy, broad; more distinct at a distance than when viewed near at hand. The arrangement of the lights and shadows seems rather the result of a happy haste, in which half the effect was produced by design, half by accident, than of great labour and care; and yet how exquisitely true the general aspect! Every stroke tells, and serves, as in the portraits of Raeburn, to do more than relieve the features: it serves also to indicate the prevailing mood and predominant power to the mind. And here is another portrait, quiet, deeply-toned, gentlemanly,––a transcript apparently of one of the more characteristic portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Perhaps, however, of all our British artists, the artist whose published works most nearly resemble a set of these drawings is Sir Joshua Reynolds. We have a folio volume of engravings from his pictures before us; and when, placing side by side with the prints the sketches in brown, we remark the striking similarity of style that prevails between them, we feel more strongly than at perhaps any former period, that the friend of Johnson and of Burke must have been a consummate master of his art. The engraver, however, cannot have done full justice to the originals. There is a want of depth and prominence which the near neighbourhood of the photographic drawings renders very apparent: the shades in the subordinate parts of the picture are more careless and much less true; nor have the lights the same vivid and sunshiny effect. There is one particular kind of resemblance between the two which strikes as remarkable, because of a kind which could 187 scarce be anticipated. In the volume of prints there are three several likenesses of the artist himself, all very admirable as pieces of art, and all, no doubt, sufficiently like, but yet all dissimilar in some points from each other. And this dissimilarity in the degree which it obtains, one might naturally deem a defect––the result of some slight inaccuracy in the drawing. Should not portraits of the same individual, if all perfect likenesses of him, be all perfectly like one another? No; not at all. A man at one moment of time, and seen from one particular point of view, may be very unlike himself when seen at another moment of time, and from another point of view. We have at present before us the photographic likenesses of four several individuals––three likenesses of each––and no two in any of the four sets are quite alike. They differ in expression, according to the mood which prevailed in the mind of the original at the moment in which they were imprinted upon the paper. In some respects the physiognomy seems different; and the features appear more or less massy in the degree in which the lights and shadows were more or less strong, or in which the particular angle they were taken in brought them out in higher or lower relief.
We shall venture just one remark more on these very interesting drawings. The subject is so suggestive of thought at the present stage, that it would be no easy matter to exhaust it; and it will, we have no doubt, be still more suggestive of thought by and by; but we are encroaching on our limits, and must restrain ourselves, therefore, to the indication of just one of the trains of thought which it has served to originate. Many of our readers must be acquainted with Dr. Thomas Brown’s theory of attention,––‘a state of mind,’ says the philosopher, ‘which has been understood to imply the exercise of a peculiar intellectual power, but which, in the case of attention to objects of sense, appears to be nothing more than 188 the co-existence of desire with the perception of the object to which we are said to attend.’ He proceeds to instance how, in a landscape in which the incurious gaze may see many objects without looking at or knowing them, a mere desire to know brings out into distinctness every object in succession on which the desire fixes. ‘Instantly, or almost instantly,’ continues the metaphysician, ‘without our consciousness of any new or peculiar state of mind intervening in the process, the landscape becomes to our vision altogether different. Certain parts only––those parts which we wished to know particularly––are seen by us; the remaining parts seem almost to have vanished. It is as if everything before had been but the doubtful colouring of enchantment, which had disappeared, and left us the few prominent realities on which we gaze; or rather as if some instant enchantment, obedient to our wishes, had dissolved every reality beside, and brought closer to our sight the few objects which we desired to see.’ Now, in the transcript of the larger tableau vivant before us––that which represents Dr. Chalmers seated among his friends on the Moderator’s chair––we find an exemplification sufficiently striking of the laws on which this seemingly mysterious power depends. They are purely structural laws, and relate not to the mind, but to the eye,––not to the province of the metaphysician, but to that of the professor of optics. The lens of the camera obscura transmits the figures to the prepared paper, on quite the same principle on which in vision the crystalline lens conveys them to the retina. In the centre of the field in both cases there is much distinctness, while all around its circumference the images are indistinct and dim. We have but to fix the eye on some object directly in front of us, and then attempt, without removing it, to ascertain the forms of objects at some distance on both sides, in order to convince ourselves that the field of distinct vision is a very limited field indeed. And 189 in this transcript of the larger tableau vivant we find exactly the same phenomena. The central figures come all within the distinct field. Not so, however, the figures on both sides. They are dim and indistinct; the shades dilute into the lights, and the outlines are obscure. How striking a comment on the theory of Brown! We see his mysterious power resolved in that drawing into a simple matter of light and shade, arranged in accordance with certain optical laws. The clear central space in which the figures are so distinct, corresponds to the central space in the retina; it is the attention-point of the picture, if we may so speak. In the eye this attention-point is brought to bear, through a simple effort of the will, on the object to be examined; and the rest of the process, so pleasingly, but at the same time so darkly, described by the philosopher, is the work of the eye itself.