from the difficulties which would attend the previous preparation and subsequent development of the plates. These operations are now conducted in what is termed a dark room, dark only in a photographic sense, being illuminated by means of a colored light which, whilst it enables the operator easily to watch the progress of the work, produces no injurious effect upon the sensitive surfaces." Painting-for in speaking of Art I refer to painting-is an emotional and intellectual interpretation of nature. Its powers of imitation are extremely limited, but the painter can represent colour, and in that respect he can produce truer work. Now let us compare the vast compass of light nature can command to anything we can possibly put on paper. Let one million represent the sun, the brightest thing in nature, and the unit represent the blackest thing we know. The lightest thing we can produce on paper is a thousand times darker than nature's light, and the darkest pigment is five hundred times lighter than nature's dark, and so we are crippled, but here our paintings are wiser than our photographs. The former husbands her resources, puts light where nature puts it but in a smaller degree, to suit her limited compass, while the latter spends degree for degree with nature, and is very soon exhausted,

Photography is a most useful invention, but we must not ask for too much, it will represent truthfully a little at a time, and so be of much use to the artist as memoranda. One of the best photographs I can think of representing the sea explains this. The negative has been exposed a very short time to preserve the light on the clouds, and the glitter of the sunshine on the water, consequently these two truths are obtained, but the shade upon the clouds appear dark brown, and the pier and people on it are devoid of all detail. In comparison my mind wanders to a painting of the sea, by a great artist certainly; here the light on the clouds and the sunshine on the water are as true as the photograph, but there is the hazy distance, a little green meadow in the foreground, and figures, each one a portrait. As I before mentioned, art is often assisted by photography, something to remind the artist of a certain position of the ever restless wave; but photographs never should be copied, and I will endeavour to show why. The

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photographer gives the fact in its stern truth and no more, but the painter always sympathises more or less with the excitement of the beholder, for he hinself is a beholder. Our individual self must be shown in our painting, and if it has no other feeling in it than love or admiration for the place depicted, that is sufficient to carry the picture out of the range of photography into the regions of art. Speaking of the hard truth of photography reminds me of the peculiar power of pluctration it possesses, an instance of which was told by Professor Ball (now Sir Robert Ball) in one of the many able lectures which he has given on Astronomy, and which I have been fortunate enough to listen to. The lecturer was speaking of the immense use photography was to the astronomer, how it not only represented what any one with the aid of the telescope could see, but penetrated still deeper, and gave detail where blank space only was visible to the human eye. In continuing he mentioned a most remarkable instance of this power. disused Atlantic vessel was lying in the docks at Liverpool, and being of no use the space visible to the passers by had been let for advertising purposes, so that different colored painted letters and illustrations had covered the whole space. Afterwards this was discontinued, and the vessel was re-tarred, an enterprising photographer in Liverpool thought it a good opportunity for photographing this old marine servant,. and much was his surprise when the developing was accomplished to find that instead of the uniform dark surface of the boat, the advertisements were there just as beforeColeman's mustard still the best in the world, and Lewis' excellent tea now, as it had always had been, without rival.

A

Much is said upon the advisability and otherwise of artists being photographers, but little upon the almost necessity of photographers being artists. As a commercial element photography began with the introduction of the daguerrotype. This process had always something taking and pretty about it, even in its poor examples it refused to be quite ugly, and in skilful hands, with a good subject, it was often exquisite. But it was costly, and difficult for any but the dry-test process, consequently no one but the artistic, no one but a lover of the beautiful would attempt it, and it was soon laid aside for the cheaper, coarser, and easier glass positive. The simplicity of

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this latter process invited swarms of all sorts and conditions of people to the practice of it. Its easy method could be mastered by anyone. Clumsy ignorance, coarse impecuniousness, rushed to it, as if it were a mine of gold. It lived its day of prosperity, and then passed away before the various paper processes that began to find favor. Of these the "carte de visite" was highly remunerative for some time. At the introduction of these paper pictures an artistic taste began to assert itself. An artist here and there drifting unrecognised on the tracks of fate had the acuteness to see this new business lying like an Eldorado before him, and he stepped in among the intensely ignorant, who were the bulk of those who just found its riches. This addition of artistic operators soon began to raise the standard of work in photography in the large towns. Unfortunately some of the prosperous began to employ inferior artists to work for them, and this, though it did not impede the progress of the profession on the whole, was at the same time a very ungracious characteristic, which is only too prevalent now. The artists who took pride in doing their own work have almost fallen out of sight.

As photographers increased in number, and photography found public favour, so miniature painting died out, Sir William Ross being among the last who made it a success. The painter's room had held a charm of its own hitherto. It seemed as if poetry, elegance, beauty, radiated an influence from every corner, all qualified by the Bohemian charm of the owner. The photographer in his glass house took possession of the people. A tale is told of two gentlemen who were walking through a photographer's waiting room into the operating room to speak to the photographer; one gentleman was smoking; an assistant stopped them and said, "Gentlemen, you must not smoke, this is no common hartist's studio remember!" The intruders retreated hastily. One was an architect, and the other an artist of great repute at that time. What is Fine Art ? A trustworthy person once said, "Fine Art is the work of the head, the heart, and the hands." Does the photograph employ all these in its production? It must do before it can be classed among the fine arts. When the light artist works, he places a sitter in a glass house, and having arranged him or her hastily beside various accessories,

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he takes the cap off a camera that is already filled with a sensitive plate. For some few throbbing seconds the sitter keeps as nearly steady as possible while the light of the form strikes itself on the sensitive film. The operator puts on the cap at such time as his judgment decides. The plate is handed to an assistant who develops it, it is then passed on to a re-toucher. Then a printer places sensitive paper beneath it to receive an impression. This again is toned and fixed, "spotted," and sent to the client-surely all this is the work of the hand only. Great attention must be paid to the arrangement of the sitter and accessories, and it is here we note that the photographer must be an artist before such pictures can be produced that we hope to see in the future.

A

The lens is master of the situation, it cannot be used as a brush or knife to carry out an idea or correct a fault. movement of the eyelid, a jerk of the little finger are remorselessly commented upon and turned into utter nonsense by the lens, and it is powerless to remedy them or atone for them at all. The whole ordeal must be gone through again. Though I maintain that the photographer while photographing can never bring into play the qualities necessary for the painter or draughtsman, yet I would strongly advise every taker of portraits by this method being

an artist.

It is in grouped humanity the photograph fails most signally. Either the attempt to arrange the figures artistically is feeble, or the frank ignorance displayed when they are ordered like ninepins, is revolting. The photographer can gain and apply knowledge akin to the painter's, in arranging and bringing together the materials of his subject. The more of the artist he is, the more he will see the necessity for counteracting the known defects of the lens. I know of a very successful photographer who makes charcoal drawings of the possible arrangements that might be carried out where half-adozen people or more are to be represented together; with that before him the result is usually successful, for his mind is free to attend to the mere mechanical considerations, he having his sitters arranged nearly as they had been designed

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in the cartoon. Another artistic photographer I can think of whose portraits tell like original drawings of the best class, such is their unfaltering depth and breadth of effect. They are simple, too, owing doubtless to the backgrounds, which are designed and painted by himself. He works in an oldfashioned painstaking way, but it is a way that can never go out of fashion, for the best portrait painters of the best periods have worked in it. He attributes his success to his training as a painter. On the whole photography has a great future before it. Art in photography is only just beginning to assert itself. If the public would only show favour for the beautiful, it would become more and more apparent and widespread.

Though photography can never take the place of painting it can aid the painter in many ways, and will ever, by its rapidity and truth, be essential to the comfort and pleasure of life.

COLOURED

TRANSPARENCIES.

BY H. CRISP.

THE following directions for the production of transparencies (either for lantern slides or otherwise) ranging in colour from à cold black to a rich deep red, at a minimum of expense and trouble, will, I am sure, be of interest and perhaps profit to many amateurs who, like myself, have grown tired of the same unvarying tone, which is considered the correct thing by nine out of every ten lantern slide makers.

Even with commercial plates a great variation of colour may be obtained with suitable exposure and development, but none that I have experimented with work so well and give such striking and beautiful results as plates prepared as follows. Presuming that the reader has never attempted plate making, let me just say that if strict cleanliness is observed and ordinary care taken in following the directions given, failure should be impossible.

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