In the “Judgment of Paris,” by Rubens, the horizontal line of the background cuts the waist of the first female figure, showing that the artist was seated. The other two female figures are placed against a background of rocks and dark masses of foliage. Rubens’ picture of the “Holy Family and St. George” is also a good example of the kind of picture for the photographer to study as to the situation of the horizontal line.
The picture of “The Idle Servant,” by Nicolaes Maes, is also an excellent subject for study of this kind. It shows the due relation of the horizon of an interior in a very marked degree, and its shape and subject are very suitable to the size and form of a carte-de-visite. So are his pictures of “The Cradle” and “A Dutch Housewife.”
The picture of “John Arnolfini of Lucca and his Wife,” painted by John Van Eyck in the fifteenth century, is an excellent specimen of an interior background, with a peep out of a window on one side of the room. This is a capital subject for the study of photographers who wish to use a background representing an interior.
“The Holy Family at a Fountain,” a picture of the Dutch school, painted by Schoorel in the sixteenth century, has an elaborate landscape background with the horizon above the heads of the figures, as if the artist had been standing and the models sitting.
For an example of a portrait less than half-length, with a landscape background, look at the portrait of “An Italian Gentleman,” by Andrea da Solario. This picture shows how very conscientiously the old masters worked up to the truth of nature in representing the right amount of landscape in proportion to the figure; but the background is much too hard and carefully worked out to be pleasing. Besides, it is very destructive to the force and power of the picture, which will be at once visible on going to the portraits by Rembrandt, which have a marvellous power, and seem to stand right before the dark atmospheric backgrounds which that artist generally painted in his portraits.
There are other examples of half-length portraits with landscape backgrounds, wherein the horizontal line passes right through the eyes of the principal figure, one of which I will mention. It is that of the “Virgin and Child,” by Lorenzo di Credi. In this picture the horizontal line passes right through the eyes of the Virgin without interfering with the interest of the chief object.
Several examples of an opposite character are to be seen in the National Gallery, with the horizon of the landscape background much too low in the picture. It is needless to call special attention to them. After carefully examining the works already named, and comparing them with the natural effects to be observed daily, it will be quickly seen which is a truthful picture in this respect, and which is a false one.
SHARPNESS AND SOFTNESS V. HARDNESS.
The discussion on “Sharpness: what is it?” at the meeting of the South London Photographic Society in May, 1861, and the more recent discussion on “Focussing” at the last meeting of the same Society, seem to me to have lost much of their value and importance to photographers for want of a better definition of the term hardness as applied to art, and as used by artists in an artistic sense. Webster, in his second definition of the word “hardness,” gives it as “difficulty to be understood.” In that sense Mr. Wall succeeded admirably when he gave the term concentration, in reply to Mr. Hughes, who asked Mr. Wall what he meant by hardness. Fairholt gives the art meaning of the word as “want of refinement; academic drawing, rather than artistic feeling.” But even that definition would not have been sufficiently comprehensive to convey an adequate idea of the meaning of the term in contradistinction to the word sharpness, and I cannot but think that Mr. Wall failed in his object in both papers, and lost considerable ground in both discussions, by not giving more attention to the nice distinctions of the two terms as used in art, and explaining their artistic meanings more clearly.