Mr. Bedford’s landscapes presented their usual charm, and the tone of his prints seemed to surpass the general beauty of his every-day work.
Mr. Blanchard also exhibited some excellent landscapes, and displayed his usual happy choice of subject and point of sight.
An immense number of photographs by amateurs, Mr. Brownrigg, Mr. Beasley, and others, were exhibited in folios and distributed about the walls, but it is impossible for me to describe or criticise more.
I have already drawn my yarn a good length, and shall conclude by repeating what I said at starting, that a pleasanter evening, or more useful and instructive exhibition, has never been got up by the Photographic Society of London, and it is to be hoped that the success and eclat attending it will encourage them to go and do likewise next year, and every succeeding one of its natural life, which I doubt not will be long and prosperous, for the exhibition just closed has given unmistakable evidence of there being “life in the old dog yet.”
Photographic News, Nov. 22nd, 1867.
THE USE OF CLOUDS IN LANDSCAPES.
The subject of printing skies and cloud effects from separate negatives having been again revived by the reading of papers on that subject at the South London Photographic Society, I think it will not be out of place now to call attention to some points that have not been commented upon—or, at any rate, very imperfectly—by either the readers of the papers or by the speakers at the meetings, when the subject was under discussion.
The introduction of clouds in a landscape by an artist is not so much to fill up the blank space above the object represented on the lower part of the canvas or paper, as to assist in the composition of the picture, both as regards linear and aerial perspective, and in the arrangement of light and shade, so as to secure a just balance and harmony of the whole, according to artistic principles.
Clouds are sometimes employed to repeat certain lines in the landscape composition, so as to increase their strength and beauty, and to unite the terrestrial part of the picture with the celestial. At other times they are used to balance a composition, both in form and effect, to prevent the picture being divided into two distinct and diagonal portions, as evidenced in many of the pictures by Cuyp; on other occasions they are introduced solely for chiaroscuro effects, so as to enable the artist to place masses of dark upon light, and vice versa. Of that use I think the works of Turner will afford the most familiar and beautiful examples.