Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1906 (Heft 14))

And how?
First, by association with originality. In this hot-house the microbe will have a better chance
than if denied incubation. Its development appears first by enthusiasm, then inquiry, then a
growing unrest, then discontent, and when all seems dark something happens, easily, all by itself.
The man has arrived.
If association be necessary, seek out the old masters; they had the first chances at the secrets
you are after and these are now world’s property. How strange that but few know this!
But if the old masters are too remote and you long for a closer touch go to the modern
masters. They are here among us. Some of them have gone apart by themselves, but they are
none the less approachable. Their protest is against the “conventional in pictorial photography.”
What wonder, if by this is meant the thoughtless, careless, haphazard outpourings of the print-
rooms of the country. The term, however, is unfortunate, as it really does not designate this, but
does stigmatize the conventions of art which none more truly than the Photo-Secession are helping
to conserve.
We enter to find the snug exhibition of a hundred frames tastefully hung in three attic
galleries.
A glance is sufficient to show that no conventions in art have been seceded from. Many of
the best of them have here a better setting forth than they usually receive at the National Academy.
Indeed the Prado, the Pitti, the Dresden, and the London National Gallery in time begin to loom
up and enter claims. Here is Velasquez, and Rembrandt, Michael Angelo, Terbourg, Rossetti,
Besnard and Manet—photographs not reminiscent of any particular creations by these artists, but
bearing all the marks of the spirit dwelling in them.
Coming, as the writer did, after a series of stops along the avenue at the galleries of the dealers,
he was obliged to confess that a greater thrill was his as he glanced at those burlap-covered walls
than had come to him in those palaces with “purple and fine,, art.
But the objector says if we seek originality, why look for it where we are reminded of
other men?
The formative principles of art are so few that of necessity they are in continual use. Per-
sonality in art is determined by varying degrees in the force or inclination of these principles.
The critic can not nor should he want to determine the exact personal influence accounting for
a result.
But while what Mr. Steichen calls a “Poster Lady” recalls Velasquez, his “Profile”
in no wise does, and it is just as good, constructed, too, with the same daring and surety as
the former.
The supposition is that in the former case two artists directed by the same line of thought
ran parallel.
The same may be said of his “In Memoriam," a heroic nude which could well adorn the
sepulchre of a de Medicis side by side with the marbles of Michael Angelo.
But in the "Penseur," his portrait of Rodin, to the original conception of which he has
now added a bronze figure on the right, contributing another great simple space of dark, one should
not say he recalls Rembrandt, but rather at this rate Rembrandt will, in time, remind us of
Steichen. Not that this particular print has the subtleties of Rembrandt luminous shadows, but it
has all and more of the great gamut of chiaroscuro upon which the master played.
But, as an application of these forces to modern portraiture, witness his "Chase." How
cunningly do the shadows creep over this figure, losing its vertical lines which parallel the sides,
sweeping the whole together laterally at the bottom and reserving the light until it may burst in and
assert its supremacy where it will do the most good! Above the face with its redundancy of light
the delicate shadows gather again, and the well-polished hat with its particular curve joins its force
with theirs. In his mother and child in a garden entitled “Sunlight Patches,, the opportunity of
light and shade has been used for variegation instead of concentration, the theme in each case being
regulative of the manner.
On the opposite wall Clarence White shows even greater variety of temperament—no two of
his nine contributions recalling any other, yet each having a parallel in the erstwhile art of the
painter. “The Kiss” is remonitory of Rossetti, the “Old Chest” of Tolmuche, “Mrs. W.”
recalls the sixteenth-century Dutch interiors — but why particularize ? Happy are we that there be

39