MISS LILY HANBURY—A PORTRAIT.
HAROLD BAKER.
Referring now again to the illustrations which in the absence of anything else we take as fairly typical of pictorial photographs and assuming that one or the other, if not all, do please some of my readers, I will ask them to endeavour to analyse their feelings when confronting such productions.
Take now an ordinary commercial photographic view such as one may purchase from any seaside stationer, and compare the sensations awakened by each. In the case of the topographical view we feel some satisfaction at being able to recognise a familiar spot, or the view reminds us of some other place, or it may be quaint buildings, or rugged mountains, or miles of foliage, or what not inspire curiosity or interest because we know the photograph to be a true record of facts, that is to say we accept the photograph in lieu of the actual presence of the objects represented, and experience nearly the same feelings as we should were we to visit the spot represented. We know that the wonderful, curious, or unusual things portrayed have an existence, otherwise we could not have a photograph of them.
In all such cases our interest and value of the photograph would vastly diminish, were it possible for a photograph of this kind to be made simply by the photographer's hand and imagination without any original at all.
You look at a photograph of this or that sea-side place and remark, "Ah, yes, that's dear old Yarmouth, many a time, etc., etc.," or else, "Dear me, I wonder what place that is, it's so like——" such and such a town, or it may be you enquire "Where's that?" and you express or think to yourself you would like to go and visit the spot. These and kindred sensations are those kindled by the average photograph, but there is yet another, for you may be impelled to exclaim, "How wonderfully clear and bright that photograph is," "What a good photograph." In this case you are interested purely in the execution as an example of clever manipulation and skilful craftsmanship.
Now, compare such feelings as these with those stirred by an example of good pictorial work. In the first place your esteem for it, if you value it at all, is quite as great whether you know the place where it was made or not. If it pleases you, that pleasure is not dependent upon the fact that it does represent some place. In the case of paintings and drawings as often as not they do not pretend to represent any place at all, but are pure fiction, yet we do not value them the less. To what then is the pleasure we feel when looking at a good picture due? Is it not that a picture stirs up, that is, creates pleasant or beautiful thoughts and ideas—by pleasant I do not mean necessarily merry or joyous ones, for some hearts feel profounder pleasure in the grandeur of storm or the majesty of the mountain than in the sweet wilderness of flowery wastes, but notice that such beautiful ideas are created by the picture. You were thinking of something totally different before you came upon the landscape picture which instantly made you feel the glowing light, the stirring breeze, and hear the rustling corn and noisy brook, and yet it cannot be said it is because we recognise these things in the picture that we receive these impressions, at least it is not the kind of recognition which takes place when we see a photograph of Brighton Pier or Haddon Hall.