THE PENCIL OF NATURE.
THIS is the appropriate title of a series of pictures produced solely by the action of light on sensitive paper, and multiplied to any number of impres- sions without the aid of draughtsman, engraver, or printer. The photogra- phic process, by which the images of real objects formed in the camera- lucida are delineated on paper, is also employed to make copies of the first limning; the copies being reversed fac-similes of the original, and therefore representing realities as they appear to the eye. This process, termed Calotype, was discovered and practised by Mr. Fox TALBOT in 1833—five years before the wonderful invention of the Daguerreotype burst upon the world ; but he had not then perfected it sufficiently to make known its results. Since that time, Mr. TALBOT has improved his process so as greatly to facilitate its practice; and the Calotype—or Talbotype, as it has been complimentarily called by Mr. CLAUDET, who employs it for taking portraits—is now become a simple, certain, cheap, and rapid mode of procuring minutely-exact representations of real scenes, objects, and persons, to any extent. THIS is the appropriate title of a series of pictures produced solely by the action of light on sensitive paper, and multiplied to any number of impres- sions without the aid of draughtsman, engraver, or printer. The photogra- phic process, by which the images of real objects formed in the camera- lucida are delineated on paper, is also employed to make copies of the first limning; the copies being reversed fac-similes of the original, and therefore representing realities as they appear to the eye. This process, termed Calotype, was discovered and practised by Mr. Fox TALBOT in 1833—five years before the wonderful invention of the Daguerreotype burst upon the world ; but he had not then perfected it sufficiently to make known its results. Since that time, Mr. TALBOT has improved his process so as greatly to facilitate its practice; and the Calotype—or Talbotype, as it has been complimentarily called by Mr. CLAUDET, who employs it for taking portraits—is now become a simple, certain, cheap, and rapid mode of procuring minutely-exact representations of real scenes, objects, and persons, to any extent. The subjects of the Calotype drawings in the first part of The Pencil of Nature are various : a view of one of the Boulevards at Paris, almost equal in distinctness of detail to a Daguerreotype; part of Queen's College, Oxford, showing the abraded surface of the stone front with a strikingly real effect ; numerous articles of porcelain, exquisite for the precision with which the forms and patterns are represented; some ar- ticles of cut glass, exhibiting with matchless truth the peculiar quality of the lights on transparent substances ; and a bust, in which the deli- cate gradations of light into shade produce an appearance of relief and rotundity which attests the superiority of the "pencil of Nature" to that of Art. The neutral tints are of a warm brownish hue, with occasion- ally a tinge of red or purple; the tint different in every instance, its hue depending on the chemical operation of light on the paper. This variation of tint is rather pleasing than otherwise ; for all the varieties are mellow and agreeable to the eye, and much preferable to the metallic glare and livid blackness of Daguerreotype-plates. The images of the Calotype are only inferior to those of the Daguerreo- type in this respect—the definition of form is not so sharp, nor are the shadows so pure and transparent. By looking through a mag- nifying-glass at a Daguerreotype-plate, details imperceptible to the naked eye become visible in the shaded parts : not so with the Cabo- type drawings—they do not bear looking into. This arises chiefly from the rough texture and unequal substance of the paper ; which cannot, of course, present such a delicate image as the finely-polished surface of a silvered plate. This defect, we think, is not so irremediable as may be supposed. The paper being rendered sensitive by frequent washes of chemical liquids, any artificial surface is inevitably de- stroyed; the perfectly smooth surface desiderated can only be attained by a mathematically-even thickness of its substance. To produce this is impossible as paper is at present made: the stream of liquid pulp of which the paper is composed is lumpy ; and in its progress from the liquid to the solid state, it passes over a wire-gauze web, that leaves its impress on one surface and produces inequality of texture. A pulp of macerated rags may not be susceptible of the requisite equality of substance ; but there is an invention now in progress, by which paper is made from straw reduced to pulp, that may possibly yield a substance as delicate in texture, and even in substance, as it is pure in quality and tough in fabric. Meanwhile, The Pencil of Nature affords abundant evidence of the utility of the Calotype process—to the traveller, in fixing the scenes be visits ; to the naturalist, in procuring a faithful representation of living and inanimate objects ; and to the world at large in preserving the fea- tures of those dear to us. Nor should its value to the artist be unno- ticed ; since the limnings of The Pencil of Nature demonstrate the importance of a due knowledge and observance of the distribution of light and shade in delineating every object, and the compatibility of breadth of effect with minuteness of detail in a picture. The triumph of Trims and the Old Masters is complete indeed, when Nature herself produces pictures exemplifying the soundness of the principles on which they painted.
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