Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art.

by P. H. Emerson

There is much misconception as to the use of the word “creator” in the arts. Some think only those gentlemen who paint mythological pictures, or story-telling pictures, are creators. Of course such distinction is absurd; any artist is a creator when he produces a picture or writes a poem; he creates the picture or speech by which he appeals to others. He is the author, creator, or whatever you like to call him, he is responsible for its existence.

Fine art.

Versifying, Prose-writing, Music, Sculpture, Painting, Photography, Etching, Engraving, and Acting, are all arts, but none is in itself a fine art, yet each and all can be raised to the dignity of a fine art when an artist by any of these methods of expression so raises his art by his intellect to be a fine art. For this reason every one who writes verse and prose, who sculpts, paints, photographs, etches, engraves, is not necessarily an artist at all, for he does not necessarily have the intellect, or use it in practising his art. It has long been customary to call all painters and sculptors artists, as it has long been customary in Edinburgh to call all medical students doctors. But in both cases the terms are equally loosely applied. Our definition, then, of an artist is a person who whether by verse, prose, sculpture, painting, photography, etching, engraving, or music, raises his art to a fine art by his work, and the works of such artist alone are works of art.

High art.

In a word, high and low art are absurd terms, no art is high or low. Art is either good or bad art, not high or low, except when skied or floored at exhibitions. “High art” and “higher artistic sense” we shall not use because they are meaningless terms, for if they are not meaningless then every picture falls under one or other category, high or low; if so let some one classify all pictures into these two divisions and he will find himself famous—as the laughing-stock of the world.

Ideal.

A volume might be written on this word, but it would be a volume of words with little meaning. As applied to art, the meaning of “ideal” has generally been that of something existing in fancy or in imagination, something visionary, an imaginary type of perfection. G. H. Lewes says, “Nothing exists but what is perceived;” we would say, nothing exists for us but what is perceived, and this we would make a first principle of all art. A work of pictorial art is no abstract thing, but a physical fact, and must be judged by physical laws. If a man draws a monster which does not exist, what is it? It is but a modified form of some existing thing or combination of things, and is after all not half so terrible as many realities. What is more terrible than some of the snakes than the octopus, than the green slimy crabs of our own waters? Certainly none of the dragons and monsters drawn from the imagination is half so horrible. Did the great Greek artist, Æschylus, describe a dragon as gnawing at the liver of Prometheus? No, he simply drew the picture of a vulture as being sufficiently emblematic. But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the dragon is more dreadful than any reality, even then the pictorial and glyptic artist cannot use it, for as he has no model to work from, the technique will necessarily be bad, there will be no subtleties of tone, of colour, of drawing, all which make nature so wonderful and beautiful. The dragon will be a pure caricature, that is all. Again, some people consider it wonderful that a painter takes a myth and renders it on canvas, and he is called “learned” and “scholarly” for this work. But what does he do? Let us say he wishes to paint the Judgment of Paris. He, if he is a good painter, will paint the background from physical matter, shaped as nearly like the Greek as possible, and he will paint the Paris and the ladies from living models. The work may be perfect technically, but where is the Greek part of it; what, then, does the painter rely upon? Why, the Greek story, for if not why does he not call it by a modern name? But no, he relies upon the well-known story—the Judgment of Paris—in fact he is taking the greater part of the merit that belongs to another man. The story of the Judgment of Paris is not his, yet it is that which draws the public; and these men are called original, and clever, and learned. Jean François Millet, in one of his scenes of Peasant Life, has more originality than all of these others put together. Many people, not conversant with the methods of art, think artists draw and paint and sculpt things “out of their heads.” Well, some do, but no good artist ever did. We have in our possession a beautiful low relief in marble, done from a well-known Italian model in London. The work is as good as any work the Greeks did, the type is most admirable, and it was done by one of the sternest naturalistic sculptors of to-day.

A highly educated friend, an old Oxford man, called on us not long ago, and was greatly taken with the head; after looking at it a long while, he turned to us and said, “An ideal head, of course!” So it is the cant of “idealism” runs through the world. But we have heard some of the most original and naturalistic artists use the word “ideal,” and on pressing them, they admitted it was misleading to others for them to use the word; but they meant by it simply intellectual, that is, the work of art had been done with intelligence and knowledge, but every suggestion had been taken from nature. The word ideal, to our mind, is so apt to mislead that we shall not use it.

Imaginative work.

Ideal work (q.v.).