Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1908 (Heft 23))

with faint praise; but, entering sympathetically into his point of view,
helped him with judicious criticism.
I greatly enjoyed the exhibition. It struck so individual a note and,
what is more, maintained it. And the note represented a fine quality of
imagination. Nor am I thinking only of the sentiment of the subjects; but
still more of the technical treatment. Vollon's fruit and vegetable subjects,
for example, display more of the truly artistic imagination than many a
so-called “ideal” picture. It is not what the artist imagines, but how he
imagines it, that determines the quality of his artistic imagination. Mr.
Seeley's work would indicate that he realizes this.
Yet the character and quality of his work undoubtedly have their origin
in sentiment. His life has been spent in the beautiful village of Stockbridge,
Massachusetts, and I, who as a boy, have felt the spell of the hills and
woods, can fancy somewhat the nature of the influence he has absorbed. If
one can reduce so vaguely wonderful an impression to the inconvenient
precision of words, I should say it is one of spaciousness and silence. Hill
tops are aloof from the stir of human things, and the eye and the spirit,
skipping immediate distances, seek the distance far removed, where Ultima
Thule hovers. Nor do the sounds of the woodland creatures disturb the
silence of the woods, where despite innumerable interruptions the vision still
persists in traveling on. These vast silences of nature may be a trifle eerie
at times, not seldom awesome, but for the most part spiritually compan-
ionable, inviting converse with the abstract and universal. Such impulse,
artistically interpreted, makes for symbolism. Form and the color of things,
the weavings of light and shade, and vistas of distance, become seen as
symbols of spiritual expression. It is in some such vein as this, if I
mistake not, that Mr. Seeley views the world and seeks subjects for his
pictures.
Naturally, the impression conveyed is most poignantly convincing in the
prints that are technically superior. And these are the ones, it seems to me,
which have not been subjected to enlargement. No doubt the gallery that
contained the enlargements made a brave showing. But mere size is a
method of attracting attention that is aroused quickly but soon wears off*.
We saw an instance of this in the large (although not “enlarged") portrait-
heads by Mr. Coburn in the members' exhibition of the Photo-Secession
last November. Technically, it is true, these enlargements of Mr. Seeley's
are superior to the Coburn portraits, which were produced, if I mistake not,
under very rapid and rather commercial conditions. But they are not good
enough to justify themselves. There are large spaces of flesh and drapery,
which are insufficient in interest, whether of texture, tone, or color. Some-
times the alteration of scale, as in the case of The Pine God, even impairs
the unity of the composition. Occasionally, however, as in Youth with
Globe, I must admit that the enlargement is a fair success.
Still, to find this artist at his best, one turns to the unenlarged
examples; to such an entirely satisfying print, for instance, as The Pines —
Sunset. Here the feeling and its technical expression reach a very high

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