Maids, Wives, and Bachelors

by Amelia E. Barr

Photographs have a bad name for durability, and when we look over our albums and see those that were once strong and expressive now pale and faded, we are forced to admit that their beauty is evanescent. But this disadvantage is very much the fault of the artist. There is nothing in the chemical constitution of photographs—formed as they are by the combination of the precious metals—to make them evanescent. The trouble lies in the last process through which they pass. This process leaves them impregnated with a destructive chemical, and the removal of all traces of it is a difficult and tedious thing. To be finished effectually, 265 the pictures ought to be bathed for a day in a good body of water constantly agitated and changed. Artists who are jealous of their art and of their personal reputation insist on this process being thoroughly attended to, but with inferior photographers the temptation to neglect it is very great, especially as in many cases the vicious chemical adds to the present brilliancy of the picture. They are further tempted by the impatience of sitters, who are often importunate for an immediate finish of their pictures. But if a durable portrait is wanted, ladies must allow the artist time for the proper cleansing of their photograph.

To the large majority of people the first interview with their photographic portrait is a heavy disappointment. They express themselves by an eloquent silence, turn it this way and that, hold it near and far off. After a little while they become used to it in its velvet frame, though they never in their heart acknowledge its truthfulness. Again, there are others to whom photography is very favorable, and they show to more advantage in their pictures than ever they did 266 in reality. These last are people whose features are well balanced and proportioned, but who are not generally considered beautiful. Faces dependent for beauty on their mobility and expression suffer most, and are indeed, in their finer moods, almost untranslatable by this process.

Still, setting aside all artistic considerations, photographic portraits have a great social value, not only because they fairly indicate the personnel of their models, but because they so faithfully represent textures that we can form a very good idea from a carte de visite of the social position of the sitter, and incidentally, from the cut, style, and material of the dress, a very good notion also of their moral calibre.

Many things are permissible in photographic portraits—which may be retaken every few months—that would justly be deprecated in a finished oil portrait destined to go down with houses and lands to unborn generations. In such a picture any intrusion of the imagination is an impertinence if made at the slightest expense of truth.

The great value of an oil portrait is this: 267 the divine, almost intangible light of expression hovering over the face is seized on by living skill and intellect, and imprisoned in colors. The sitter is not taken in one special moment, when his eyes are fixed and his muscles rigid, but in a free study of many hours the characteristics of the face are learned, and some felicitous expression caught and fixed forever. This is what gives portrait painting its special value, and drives ordinary photographic portraits out of the realms of art into those of mechanism.

Artists have various ways of treating their sitters. Some throw them into a Sir-Joshua-like attitude, and put in a Gainsborough background. Others compass the face all over, and map it out like a chart, taking elevations of every mole and dimple. But whenever an artist feels unsafe away from his compasses, and cannot trust himself, sitters should not trust him.

There is a real pleasure in sitting to a master in his art, a real weariness and disgust in sitting to a tyro. It must be remembered that not only is the best expression to be caught, but that the features 268 of any face vary so much under physical changes and mental moods that their differences may actually be measured with a foot-rule. An ordinary artist will measure these distances; an extraordinary artist will catch their subtle effects, and will draw the features as well as the expression at their very best.

A really fine oil portrait should look as well near by as it does at a distance.

Suffer no artist to leave out blemishes which contribute to the character of the original; ugly or pretty, unless a portrait is a likeness, it is worthless. There are very clever artists who cannot paint a true portrait, because they leave every picture redolent of themselves. Thus Bartolozzi in engraving Holbein’s heads, made everything Bartolozzi. But in a portrait the individuality of the sitter should permeate and usurp the whole canvas, so that in looking at it we should think only of the person represented, and quite forget the artist who brought him before us.

It is an axiom that every full-length portrait requires a curtain and a column, every half-length a table, every kit-kat a full face. 269 But surely such rules betray barrenness of invention. Every good position cannot be said to have been exhausted. Why should not every portrait be treated as a part of an historical picture in which the sitter’s position and background and accessories produced the tone and feeling most suitable to his ordinary life? Raphael in his portrait of Leo the Tenth exhibits a faithful study of such subordinates. There is a prayer-book with miniatures, a bell on the table, and a mirror at the back of the chair reflecting the whole scene. One of Rembrandt’s most charming portraits is that of his mother cutting her nails with a pair of scissors.