Studio: international art (1.1893)

The Nude in Photography

Against this it may be urged that the skin of those
accustomed to wear clothing has come to be what is
practically an artificial colour, and that the nudity
which offends does so often from this fact alone.
It is a common thing to hear travellers say that the
absence of clothing among coloured races passes

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY BARON CORVO

almost unnoticed. In photographs we certainly
find that the olive skins of Italy yield often a more
pleasant picture than the dead white of the Anglo-
Saxons. But as photographs of the Nude are, for
other reasons, not to be considered as pictures, but
merely as charts for reference, or working drawings,
as it were, for artists, we need not consider how far
this view is well founded, or if, indeed, it be worth
considering at all.

That its study is rightly held to be of primary
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importance in the training of an artist, that success
in drawing and painting the figure includes the
power of depicting all other subjects, is usually
admitted; and here we are able to illustrate some
important services rendered by the artist's latest
ally—the camera. Many causes combine to limit
the open-air study of the figure : at any time it must
needs be done quickly. Yet, with all its drawbacks
and limitations, there are qualities rendered by the
mechanical agent which even the most skilful artist
could hardly hope to attain. The faults are patent;
a certain distortion of focus, the crowd of facts
set down with no intelligent selection, the blacken-
ing of shadows, and the rigid edges of the planes—
these, and a score of other objections, need no
cataloguing. But all shortcomings granted, it
would seem that, for a record of the Nude, photo-
graphy is a distinctly useful ally that is not yet
appreciated at its intrinsic value. In certain
instances, notably a group by Mr. Frank Sutcliffe,
which, under the title of "Water-Rats," is too
widely known to make it necessary to be repro-
duced here, one doubts if the most careful study
of composition, or the most happy invention, had
resulted in a more delightful picture. Of course,
the colour of flesh in sunlight seen against water is
lost, and the supreme effort of Nature in prismatic
harmony, of a subtle brilliancy which no jewel can
rival, is not so much as suggested. To realise
what colour can be at its most complex simplicity,
one has but to study young limbs plashing the
waves of a sapphire sea beneath the sun. Pig-
ment, crystals — nay, light itself seen through
painted glass — might be set on one's palette,
and yet fail to depict the vivid positive colours
combined with exquisitely graduated miances of
the subject.

In all the range within the vision of the painter
no more difficult problem may be found; if the
camera falls short it does so in splendid company;
the pictures that even suggest the actual radiance
of flesh in such setting might be counted upon
one's fingers. But for modelling, drawing, and
flexible movement, that is to say, for the restrained
movement in repose which sculpture can suggest
so well, the photograph may be consulted with
advantage. The poise of the bodies, the perfect
carriage of the head, and irresistible truth of the
arrested movement seen in the decorative initial of
this paper, even in its reduced scale, tell out with
such certainty, that one forgives the exaggerated
size of the hands and feet, and other accidental
falsifications of values and colours which dis-
tinguish the real from the ideal; and must own