MR. HOLLYER'S PHOTOGRAPHS.*
THERE has been open for some weeks an exhibition of the well-known photographs by Mr. Frederick Hollyer, after pictures by Mr. Borne-Jones and others, and the volume before us reproduces a large number of these photographs. Let us deal with the reproducer first.
Mr. Hollyer is one of the few photographers who, in taking likenesses of people, has had the sense and skill to work for a pictorial effect. The ordinary photographer expends his pains on exaggerating the vices of the photograph ; he combines the extreme of cramp and embarrassment to the sitter with over-definition, and over-modelling in the result, while he is careful to polish and stipple away from the negative any features of life and character that it has accidentally conveyed, finishing the thing to his own horrible standard of prettiness. In Mr. Hollyer's photographs from people there is nothing of all this, and in the matter of tint and texture he has shown the same taste as in his treatment of the sitter. In a word, he has shown that the photograph may be a work of art if there is an artist behind the camera, and the best of his work, a photograph like that of Mr. George Meredith, to take an instance, will run the efforts of the por- trait-painter hard in the esteem of another generation. Mr. Hollyer has used the same skill and tact in working from pictures; and a photograph by him from a black-and-white drawing by Rossetti or Mr. Burne-Jones is, but for the greyish tone of the ground, very nearly the same thing as an original. So direct a reproduction is infinitely better than those tiresome " reproductive " etchings and engravings which lose all the touch of the original, and put nothing in its place. Their only aim is photographic, and that they miss. One might go further, and contend that in the case of a great deal of Pre-Raphaelite work one is better off with this black-and-white reproduction than one would be with the coloured original. Take Rossetti's picture of Dante's Dream. It is true that, standing before the original, one can allow for a fine colour intention, such as Rossetti always had till he came to put the paint on. But when he painted that picture his always tentative handling of paint had resulted in so hopelessly smeary a surface, that it is difficult to allow for a tolerable colour-scheme through such unpleasant texture. Now, in the photograph, this tells to a certain extent ; the black and white of the faces recalls the dirty and greasy flesh-painting ; but it is not nearly so promi- nent a feature as in the oil-painting. It is possible, therefore, to attend with less distraction to the merits of the picture as a design. Even Mr. Holman Hunt's Triumph of the Innocents has merits of the same sort in black and white. The same thing is true of a great deal of Mr. Burne-Jones's work, though, as in the case of Rossetti, there are great variations in the success or failure with which the paint itself is handled. When the medium is not paint but pencil, the execution as well as the design is that of a master, and those photographs of Mr. Hollyer's put it in the power of the student to have what is practically the autographic ceuvre of the master at a very modest outlay.
The reproductions of those photographs in Mr. Bell's book are somewhat duller than the photographs themselves, but they still give a very fair notion of the originals, the number of them is generous, and as published specimens they may serve to make the whole collection better known. It is one of the curious things about our modern picture-museums, and, indeed, museums of other kinds, how little use they make of photographs. For a few hundred pounds it would be pos- sible, in a provincial gallery of the smallest dimensions, in a small library, in fact, to have for reference photographs of all the great pictures and drawings of the world, or a whole South Kensington Museum of other objects. A provincial gallery might well spare, from the noble thousands given for single pictures, a five-pound note to buy an album of photographs like these, and every drawing-school ought to possess them.
• (1.) Edira -d Byrne-Jones a Record and Review. ) Exhibition at the Dudley Gal ery. By Malcolm Bell. Loudon and New York : George Bel and Bons.
Mr. Bell's selection for his volume includes some of the best things. There is the early Backgammon Players, with its beautiful Rossetti-like figure of the woman ; that other in Cupid's Forge; Love the Pilgrim, with the thick " meinie " of birds about his head ; that extraordinary design for the lid of a piano, where Terra Omniparens sits at the root of a vine that is clustered with her good and naughty children. The wonderful Orpheus drawings from the same piano are missing ; the Wood Nymph is given, but not the stranger Sea Nymph. There are several lovely studies of heads and draperies, and the first sketch for that Garden Court in the Briar-Rose series, that is one of the most beautiful things ever invented. In this study the direction of the branches only is indicated, and the sympathy of their design with the bowed figures comes out the more clearly; the study of the sleeping head of the girl at the loom might with advantage have been added. The initial from Mr. Morris's 2Eneid, and the Pelican Window, are also well chosen. Besides those reproductions of Mr. Hollyer's and other photographs, there are two or three photogravures.
For the book itself, apart from its illustrations, little can be said. The " record " gives a few new particulars of the schooling Mr. Burne-Jones received at the hands of Rossetti, and is so far interesting; and a useful list is given at the end of the volume of Mr. Burne-Jones's paintings and designs of various kinds, in approximately chronological order. The " review " is somewhat flatulent, and is more likely to add to the mirth of the malicious, than to increase the discrimination of the artist's admirers. It remains to add that the print of Mr. Bell's volume is clean and handsome.
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