PICTURE OF A FEMALE HIPPOPOTAMUS FROM LE VAILLANT’S BOOK OF TRAVELS, PUBLISHED MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
It must be noted that if the animals are drawn so as to stand out separated from the landscape which is a needful accessory of the picture, and brought forward into the foreground in an obviously selected pose, they must appear unnatural to the eye of the expert. Such pictures cannot fail to give an unnatural impression, for in the freedom of the wilderness the animal world never presents itself in this way to the eyes of man. In their full significance as masterpieces of nature, all the various aspects of the animal world are first manifested to us in close connection with their environment. It has been a keen satisfaction to me to find that many world-renowned artists have appreciated warmly the beauty of these photographs, and have given expression to this feeling. I have been told, for instance—what I myself had already noticed—that numbers of the pictures, especially, those showing birds on the wing, bear a great resemblance to certain famous works of Japanese painters[12] of animal life, works that seem to dive into the secrets of nature. It has been brought home to me, indeed, both by hundreds of letters and thousands of opinions expressed in conversation, that the pictures have excited almost universal interest, and that my labours have not been in vain.
Fully to enjoy the peculiar beauty of such photographs of living wild animals, the best way is undoubtedly to see the pictures considerably magnified by means of the magic lantern. On account of the special character and strangeness of most of the objects shown, I have the lantern slides lightly tinted. This colouring can be done without in the least altering the picture in its details, and its object is merely to secure greater effectiveness. Approval from all sides, both from artistic circles and from the public, satisfies me as to the correctness of this proceeding. Only in this way do photographic pictures shown by transmitted light produce the full impression of beauty and naturalness; they seem to transport the spectator directly to the far-off wilderness.
There must be some good reason for the widespread interest manifested in these pictures of the life and ways of animals, some of them still so little known, and all of them living in remote solitudes. It seems to me that the cause is deep-seated—that deep down in the heart of the highly-cultured civilised man there are involuntary yearnings after the sensations of wild, healthy, primeval nature. The progress of mankind from the so-called barbaric stage to the highest civilisation has been accomplished in so short a time, in comparison with the whole period of man’s existence, that it is easy to understand how such a longing may survive. In every man there must be something of this craving for light and air and primeval conditions.
Camelo-pardus feu Giraffe.
A GERMAN PICTURE OF THE GIRAFFE DATING FROM ABOUT TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
“The conflict of man with the animal world,” says Wilhelm Bölsche, “has passed away unsung and uncelebrated. The civilised man of to-day has hardly a recollection of the endless lapse of time during which mankind had to struggle with the beasts of the earth for mastery.” Let us for a few moments turn our gaze backwards to that far past. In epochs that the learned date back by hundreds of thousands of years, we find attempts made by the cave-dwellers to execute artistic representations of nature as they saw it. The artist of prehistoric times set to work with his rude instruments to draw in merest outline on a smooth rock-face, on a tusk taken in the chase, or on some such material, the things that had particularly attracted his thoughts or stimulated his efforts. Specimens of these primitive works of art have been handed down to us. In the first place there are pictures of animals, scratched upon ivory, and notwithstanding all their crudeness, sketched with sufficient ability to enable us to-day to recognise with certainty the objects which the artist tried to depict. Such sketches scratched on ivory, showing various kinds of animals (some of them now extinct) and forming the oldest documents of the animal-sketcher’s art, have been found in the caves of the south-west of France, in the old dwelling-places of the so-called “Madeleine” hunters of La Madeleine and Laugerie Basse. The museum at Zurich also possesses similar primitive documents from the Kesslerloch cave, near Thaingen, in the canton of Schaffhausen.
HOTTENTOT HUNTERS—A SKETCH DATING FROM 200 YEARS AGO.