The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-24 00:00:00

EIGHTH ANNUAL EXHIBITION.

But a very few years since and this exhibition
of the Photographic Society would have been looked
upon as little less than miraculous.
Having sauntered round the large apartment of
the gallery at SA, Pall-mall East, where (upon the
four walls and upon the four screens together) there
are exhibited now, in this eighth year of the
Society's existence, no less than 622 Photographs
and Daguerreotypes—we turn back, for a reason
immediately to be mentioned, to one of these re-
Markable specimens, to the one, namely, marked
(No. 56) in the printed catalogue. It is the produc-
tion of one of the most skilled photographers of the
age—Roger Fenton—whose " magic glass" has
perpetuated for the wondering gaze of posterity
almost all the incidents and localities of the
Crimean War. The picture here preiented to us
by the Collodion process, delicately manipulated by
this master of the Photographic Art, is a charming
little view of a " Bridge in Patterdale." Pausing
before it, and looking into its wonderful lights and
shadows, we hear the lake poet whispering to us
through the quotation—

"Thus having reached a bridge that overarched
The hasty rivulet where it lay becalmed
In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw
A double image."

Not content with giving us this poetic tnorceau,
we read further in the copious but far from
correctly printed catalogue—and we wince as we
read Veluti in speculo ! Grammatically put, the
three familiar words might be applied not one jot
less appositely than it is applied to No. 50—to
every one of the 622 specimens of photography in
the Exhibition. Veluti in speculum ! It is the
very motto for the perfection of the photograph !
For there truly—whether it be through the col-
lodio-album, or waxed paper, or Fothergill process,
or malt process, or Tanpenot's process, or metage-
latine, or through the exquisitely translucent medium
or agency of pure collodion—there assuredly (by
some means or other, it matters little which com-
paratively), there, through the perfection of the
photograph, every thing is Reflected as in a Mirror
or looking-glass ! How accurately, how wondrously
these reflections can be produced and perpetuated
through this extraordinary art—art though it is
but of yesterday—let the present collection at-
test, this eighth of the Photographic Society's
Annual Exhibition.

Out of the whole number of 622 pictures dis-
played upon the walls and rooms of the Society's
gallery, we have failed to discover even one of a
really inferior character. There is not a single
photograph in the apartment, we believe, but is in
some way or another meritorious. There are many
of them in the highest degree entitled to our admi-
ration, and every kind of test appears to have been
applied to the art. Every process seems to have
been tried in turn by the exhibitors. Every kind
of object seems to have been selected in turn for
experiment. " The human face divine "
in abundance. The face of nature in all her
varying aspects—winter and summer, shower
and sunshine, land and sea, garden and
moorland. Art too has been marvellously imitated
by this most marvellous of all the arts of imitation.
Sculptured masterpieces from the Elgin marbles
are here shadowed forth, as in No. 163, by Caldesi,
Blandford and Co.—faithfully copied in every flaw
and crack, in every tint and granulation of the
original material ! Elaborate engravings are here
repeated in a twinkling, as in No. 51, by H. Her-
ring—a copy of an engraving by Dominechino.
Yonder, in No. 65, is Bingham's photographic
transcript of a painting by Rembrandt. The Earl
of Caithness (No. 78) gives us a snow scene. Mr.
Robinson (No. 136) affords us a glimpse of a Holi-
day in the Greenwood. Not only oil paintings
are copied by the sunbeam as above instanced, but
water-colour drawings—as in No. 172, the Fisher-
; man's Children, photographed by Mr. Ponting,
is copied with a charming exactitude. There are
Studies of Fruit, too, in the gallery—a number of
them from the hand of Roger Fenton, as Nos. 148,
149, 150, and 157—that must make George Lance
look to his laurels, or ought we not rather
to say of this Prince, or, at any rate, Duke of Fruit
Painters, mubL make Law luult vvull Lu hi. .t.avv-
berry leaves. And, then, turning from small things
to great, from the tiny and delicate productions of
nature, to the gigantic and symmetrical fabrications
of art—what shall we say of such astounding
photographs as those two brought to us from Rome
by P. Donizielli ; No. 30, the Coliseum, the grand
old ruined Coliseum, and No. 52, St. Peter's sub-
lime and world-famous Cathedral ? What—but
that they are the very paragons of architectural
photography ! Yonder it is the sera effigies of
that grim and wondrous pile, before the mere idea
of which poor Edgar Poe thus mused in poetic
contemplation—
" Here, where a hero fell a column falls,
Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold,
A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat 1
Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair
Waved to the wind, now ways the reed and thistle 1"
Yonder it is the veritable shadowing forth of that
marvellous masterpiece of the Titanic intellect of
Buonarotti before the fagasle of which the two
gigantic fountains are, as Robert Browning has
sung—

" - growing up eternally,
Each like a musical water-treo."

Having sauntered round the gallery to survey the
miscellaneous contributions there exhibiting,
let us turn now once more, and retracing our steps,
round the apartment and about the screens, examin-
ing more particularly the sufficiently abundant
specimens of the human countenance here reflected
upon glass, or paper, or metal by the magic art of
the photographer. As we have already intimated,
we have in this special department a really abundant
variety of specimens. The majority of them won-
derfully full of interest. Hardly one portrait
among them all without its particular attraction.
And yet scarcely one of them, scarcely one at least
of the pure photographs what we might mention
without any mental reservation at all as completely
satisfactory. There arc some very strikinz
graphic portraits, for example, by those well known
and deservedly popular Photographers, the Mem%

Maull and Polyblank. Almost always effective—
yet earcely one, as we have said, of photo-
graphic portraits generally—scarcely one com-
pletely satisfactory. One only out of all the numer-
ous portraits that we remember to have seen, from
this
,firm—one only taking all is there,
that we should call, without any hesitation, com-
pletely satisfactory. It is their portrait of George
Cruikshank, the greatest of all caricaturists. And
that, of course, is not among their contributions to
the gallery in Pall-mall, being amongst their ear-
liest, as it is still to this day, to our thinking, about
the happiest of all their photographic achievements.
The photographic art, in point of fact, lacks almost
invariably that magic touch—the je ne sais guoi of
" expression" imparting animation, vitality,
identity, to the otherwise lifeless effigies drawn
upon canvass or wood, upon ivory or cardboard, by
pencils guided by the hands of master painters of
portraits and miniatures. Combine the two arts
together—the miraculous art of photography and
the still more miraculous art, if that be possible,
born of the genius of the true portrait painter—
and you have the very perfection of the miniature,
the ne plus ultra of vraisemblanee. Is any
one desirous of recognising this now as-
suredly
indisputable truth at a glance ? That wish
may be realised now any day, and that, moreover,
upon the instant after crossing the threshold of the
Photographic Society's Gallery. Turning, there—
upon that threshold—to his right hand, the visitor
to the Gallery will come immediately upon a series
of some eight-and-twenty portraits (several of them
precisely of the duplex character we have indi-
cated) half painted, half photographed—eight-and-
twenty portraits clustered together, all of them
from the mane hand, a hand long familiar to the
frequenters of the ; ; M_n_ature-room of the. Royal_
Academy as that of one of the most gifted and popu-
lar among all our miniature painters—the hand of
Thomas Carrick, now achieving to himself a new
reputation as Artist Photographer ! Several of
Mr. Carrick's portraits in the present exhibition
are really and truly nothing less admirable than
simple, veritable masterpieces. We will in-
stance but a few of them that have more
particularly caught our fancy. No. 362, George
Routledge, the eminent publisher; No. 364, J. W.
Carmichael, the well-known sea painter; and No.
366, Major Elliot, one of the young heroes of the
heavy Cavalry Charge at Balaklava. Dr, Charles
Mackay, too (No. 346) is excellent—about the hap-
piest portrait we have yet seen of our charming and
world-famous song-writer. Capital, also, are Mr. Car-
rick's portraits of (No. 352) Frederick Goodall, the
Academy's Associate, and of (No. 365), Samuel
Lover, the witty Irish novelist. These and others
in the same frame really leave nothing to be de-
sired—the brush of the artist has there given
warmth, and life, and expression to the cold, dead
outline of the original photograph.