DOI article:
G. [George] Bernard Shaw on the London Exhibitions [reprint from The Amateur Photographer, October, 1901]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.30582#0077
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forgive our American pioneers for photographing with a French accent, so to speak. I could even
forgive him for etching, if he did it as well as Rembrandt or Whistler ; but to imitate etching !!!
All the same, his portraits of Desboutin is one of the good things in the exhibition.
If a calculation were made of the subjects represented by the total superficial area of silver,
platinum, gum, and tissue in the galleries, the result would probably be ten per cent.of humanity,
thirty per cent. of background, and sixty per cent. of clothes. In the New Gallery there is, amid
acres of millinery and tailoring, just one small study of a whole woman, by Professor Ludwig von
Jan, of a rich tawny-downy quality, which would be called superb, masterly, and so forth, had it
been drawn by Henner. I invite our friends, the picture-fanciers, to look at it a moment and then
think of the works of, say, Etty ; or, if that is too dreadful, Ingres. Or say Correggio, and, at
the opposite extreme of taste, the President of the Royal Academy. True, the camera will not
build up the human figure into a monumental fiction as Michael Angelo did, or coil it cunningly
into a decorative one, as Burne-Jones did. But it will draw it as it is, in the clearest purity or the
softest mystery, as no draughtsman can or ever could. And by the seriousness of its veracity it
will make the slightest lubricity intolerable. “ Nudes from the Paris Salon” pass the moral octroi
because they justify their rank as " high art "by the acute boredom into which they plunge the
spectator. Their cheap and vulgar appeal is nullified by the vapid reality of their representation.
Photography is so truthful—its subjects are so obviously realities and not idle fancies—that dignity
is imposed on it as effectually as it is on a church congregation. Unfortunately, so is that false
decency, rightly detested by artists, which teaches people to be ashamed of their bodies : and I am
sorry to see that the photographic life-school still shirks the faces of its sitters, and thus gives them a
disagreeable air of doing something they are ashamed of.
Photography in colors is either advancing with extraordinary strides or becoming very skilful
in avoiding the subjects which baffle it. I remember seeing last year a color-photograph of a cauli-
flower which will haunt me to my grave, so very nearly right, and, consequently, so very
exquisitely wrong was it. I was accustomed to cheerfully and flagrantly impossible groups of a
strawberry, a bunch of grapes, a champagne-bottle, and a butterfly, remote alike from nature and
from art. But this confounded cauliflower was like Don Quixote’s wits : it was just the millionth
of a millimeter off the mark, and hence acquired a subtle impressiveness, the effect in the cauliflower’s
case being disquietingly baleful, as if the all but healthy green of the vegetable had been touched by
the poison of the Borgias. I find no such horror in the fascinating peep-show arranged by Messrs.
Lumière this year. It is true that they shun the cauliflower and revel only in garden-blooms,
crockery, richly colored stuffs, French yellow-blacks, and elaborately tooled bookbindings. But
the illusion is perfect ; if the process is generally practicable, the “ still-life ” painter may pawn his
poor box of squirts of gaudy clay and linseed, and apply for a place as bill-poster. In color-
printing much ingenuity has been spent in forging old engravings of various kinds. Some of the
attempts are quite successful ; but why not forge banknotes instead ? I no more doubt the capacity
of photography for imitating the lower methods than I doubt Vasari’s story of Michael Angelo
successfully imitating the caricatures scrawled on the walls by the Roman rabble. What really did
interest and stagger me were Mr. Roxby’s three-color photographs from nature, by Dr. Gustav
Selle’s process. If that blue jar is not an accidental success out of a mass of failures—if
Mr. Roxby can do it as often and as surely as Messrs. Window and Grove can photograph Miss
Ellen Terry, then the advance represented by these prints is a very notable one indeed ; for they
are complete as pictures : it is no longer a question of getting a blue photograph of a blue jar :
Mr. Roxby has got a complete picture of the jar, and a picture of fine quality at that. What other
successes the exhibition may contain I can not say, as I arrived at the New Gallery before many
of the items in the catalogue, and soon got tempted away from the color-work by Dr. Vaughan
Cornish’s wave-studies, and other scientific matters.
On the whole, the contrast of this R.P.S. exhibition with the last one shows that the
American exhibitions at Russell Square have precipitated matters a good deal, and that the bold
energy of the German photographers, all the more effective in modifying our tastes because it over-
does everything, will not let us relapse easily. Last year the big "professional" gallery was as
full of dish-cover silver prints as ever; this year a nice, shining, aluminum-complexioned officer,
with his hair newly cut and brushed for the occasion, would attract a crowd as a curiosity. This
sudden and thorough intimidation of the burnishers can hardly be taken as a change of artistic
61
forgive him for etching, if he did it as well as Rembrandt or Whistler ; but to imitate etching !!!
All the same, his portraits of Desboutin is one of the good things in the exhibition.
If a calculation were made of the subjects represented by the total superficial area of silver,
platinum, gum, and tissue in the galleries, the result would probably be ten per cent.of humanity,
thirty per cent. of background, and sixty per cent. of clothes. In the New Gallery there is, amid
acres of millinery and tailoring, just one small study of a whole woman, by Professor Ludwig von
Jan, of a rich tawny-downy quality, which would be called superb, masterly, and so forth, had it
been drawn by Henner. I invite our friends, the picture-fanciers, to look at it a moment and then
think of the works of, say, Etty ; or, if that is too dreadful, Ingres. Or say Correggio, and, at
the opposite extreme of taste, the President of the Royal Academy. True, the camera will not
build up the human figure into a monumental fiction as Michael Angelo did, or coil it cunningly
into a decorative one, as Burne-Jones did. But it will draw it as it is, in the clearest purity or the
softest mystery, as no draughtsman can or ever could. And by the seriousness of its veracity it
will make the slightest lubricity intolerable. “ Nudes from the Paris Salon” pass the moral octroi
because they justify their rank as " high art "by the acute boredom into which they plunge the
spectator. Their cheap and vulgar appeal is nullified by the vapid reality of their representation.
Photography is so truthful—its subjects are so obviously realities and not idle fancies—that dignity
is imposed on it as effectually as it is on a church congregation. Unfortunately, so is that false
decency, rightly detested by artists, which teaches people to be ashamed of their bodies : and I am
sorry to see that the photographic life-school still shirks the faces of its sitters, and thus gives them a
disagreeable air of doing something they are ashamed of.
Photography in colors is either advancing with extraordinary strides or becoming very skilful
in avoiding the subjects which baffle it. I remember seeing last year a color-photograph of a cauli-
flower which will haunt me to my grave, so very nearly right, and, consequently, so very
exquisitely wrong was it. I was accustomed to cheerfully and flagrantly impossible groups of a
strawberry, a bunch of grapes, a champagne-bottle, and a butterfly, remote alike from nature and
from art. But this confounded cauliflower was like Don Quixote’s wits : it was just the millionth
of a millimeter off the mark, and hence acquired a subtle impressiveness, the effect in the cauliflower’s
case being disquietingly baleful, as if the all but healthy green of the vegetable had been touched by
the poison of the Borgias. I find no such horror in the fascinating peep-show arranged by Messrs.
Lumière this year. It is true that they shun the cauliflower and revel only in garden-blooms,
crockery, richly colored stuffs, French yellow-blacks, and elaborately tooled bookbindings. But
the illusion is perfect ; if the process is generally practicable, the “ still-life ” painter may pawn his
poor box of squirts of gaudy clay and linseed, and apply for a place as bill-poster. In color-
printing much ingenuity has been spent in forging old engravings of various kinds. Some of the
attempts are quite successful ; but why not forge banknotes instead ? I no more doubt the capacity
of photography for imitating the lower methods than I doubt Vasari’s story of Michael Angelo
successfully imitating the caricatures scrawled on the walls by the Roman rabble. What really did
interest and stagger me were Mr. Roxby’s three-color photographs from nature, by Dr. Gustav
Selle’s process. If that blue jar is not an accidental success out of a mass of failures—if
Mr. Roxby can do it as often and as surely as Messrs. Window and Grove can photograph Miss
Ellen Terry, then the advance represented by these prints is a very notable one indeed ; for they
are complete as pictures : it is no longer a question of getting a blue photograph of a blue jar :
Mr. Roxby has got a complete picture of the jar, and a picture of fine quality at that. What other
successes the exhibition may contain I can not say, as I arrived at the New Gallery before many
of the items in the catalogue, and soon got tempted away from the color-work by Dr. Vaughan
Cornish’s wave-studies, and other scientific matters.
On the whole, the contrast of this R.P.S. exhibition with the last one shows that the
American exhibitions at Russell Square have precipitated matters a good deal, and that the bold
energy of the German photographers, all the more effective in modifying our tastes because it over-
does everything, will not let us relapse easily. Last year the big "professional" gallery was as
full of dish-cover silver prints as ever; this year a nice, shining, aluminum-complexioned officer,
with his hair newly cut and brushed for the occasion, would attract a crowd as a curiosity. This
sudden and thorough intimidation of the burnishers can hardly be taken as a change of artistic
61
