DOI Kapitel:
Colour photography
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47958#0035
COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
And in common fairness, too, one gladly admits as well that when
he deserts landscape for genre work, for a certain kind of por-
traiture, and (especially) for a certain sort of still-life treatment, he
reduces the difficulties of the game so considerably that he makes
it a very genuine and legitimate mode of activity. For, once indoors,
he can himself play the part of deus ex ma china, and, descending to
the rfile of stage-manager, can drag properties hither and thither
until he succeeds in producing something which contains that
much-desired coincidence. It is not, perhaps, the lightest or airiest
of tasks ; it compares somewhat drably with the less manual
activities of the painter ; for he has to do laboriously and physi-
cally what the brush accomplishes by a single flicker and dab. But
that he can accomplish the task and give us, as a result, certain
sensations of rich and delicate value, some of the flower-studies of
Baron de Meyer—which form perhaps the most successful auto-
chromes in this book—testify quite completely. His “ Still-life,”
with the General Jacqueminots drooping so delightfully out of
the delicately chosen bowl is distinctly a piece of creation (No. 75) :
it is itself beautiful; its beauty has been deliberately captured, the
product of a decisive effort of “ imaginative reason ” ; and it is a
beauty recondite and remote, very different from the rather dis-
tracting and insouciant beauty which would emanate from the
actual flowers, the actual bowl and drapery. And even more perfect
is the dexterous and memorable little arrangement in red-bronze
and lacquer-green (No. 69). These two pictures are certainly pieces
of art, their maker (even if he had produced no monochrome
pictures) would certainly have proved his right to the ancient and
honourable title.
It is by a similar process of stage carpentry that the other pictures
which seem to me most successful have been granted the beauty
that saves them: Mr. Coburn’s “Blue Dress” (No. 22) and his
“ Lady in Red” (No. 38) ; Mr. Rawlins’s “ Mrs. W. M.” (No. 87) ;
Mr. Craig Annan’s curious experiment in greens (No. 8) ;
Mr. Kuhn’s decidedly ambitious portrait-group of three (No. 57).
In all of these the groupings have been done leisurely and
deliberately ; the picture has been prepared as one prepares a
stage-picture ; the Camera has merely been used to perpetuate it.
And that method, it seems to me, is the only one by which the
autochromist can hope, as yet, to produce pictures which are
anything more than valuable records, significant and curious memo-
randa, adroit exemplifications of a singular scientific discovery.
“ As yet.” . . . Inevitably, one adds that safe-guard ; for “ the
9
B
And in common fairness, too, one gladly admits as well that when
he deserts landscape for genre work, for a certain kind of por-
traiture, and (especially) for a certain sort of still-life treatment, he
reduces the difficulties of the game so considerably that he makes
it a very genuine and legitimate mode of activity. For, once indoors,
he can himself play the part of deus ex ma china, and, descending to
the rfile of stage-manager, can drag properties hither and thither
until he succeeds in producing something which contains that
much-desired coincidence. It is not, perhaps, the lightest or airiest
of tasks ; it compares somewhat drably with the less manual
activities of the painter ; for he has to do laboriously and physi-
cally what the brush accomplishes by a single flicker and dab. But
that he can accomplish the task and give us, as a result, certain
sensations of rich and delicate value, some of the flower-studies of
Baron de Meyer—which form perhaps the most successful auto-
chromes in this book—testify quite completely. His “ Still-life,”
with the General Jacqueminots drooping so delightfully out of
the delicately chosen bowl is distinctly a piece of creation (No. 75) :
it is itself beautiful; its beauty has been deliberately captured, the
product of a decisive effort of “ imaginative reason ” ; and it is a
beauty recondite and remote, very different from the rather dis-
tracting and insouciant beauty which would emanate from the
actual flowers, the actual bowl and drapery. And even more perfect
is the dexterous and memorable little arrangement in red-bronze
and lacquer-green (No. 69). These two pictures are certainly pieces
of art, their maker (even if he had produced no monochrome
pictures) would certainly have proved his right to the ancient and
honourable title.
It is by a similar process of stage carpentry that the other pictures
which seem to me most successful have been granted the beauty
that saves them: Mr. Coburn’s “Blue Dress” (No. 22) and his
“ Lady in Red” (No. 38) ; Mr. Rawlins’s “ Mrs. W. M.” (No. 87) ;
Mr. Craig Annan’s curious experiment in greens (No. 8) ;
Mr. Kuhn’s decidedly ambitious portrait-group of three (No. 57).
In all of these the groupings have been done leisurely and
deliberately ; the picture has been prepared as one prepares a
stage-picture ; the Camera has merely been used to perpetuate it.
And that method, it seems to me, is the only one by which the
autochromist can hope, as yet, to produce pictures which are
anything more than valuable records, significant and curious memo-
randa, adroit exemplifications of a singular scientific discovery.
“ As yet.” . . . Inevitably, one adds that safe-guard ; for “ the
9
B