"Good Art"

Good art only appeals to the highly cultivated at the first glance, but it gradually grows on the uncultivated, or the half cultivated; with bad art the case is otherwise.

Life Of The Model

Give the life of the model in a portrait, not his bearing towards you during a mauvais quart d'heure.

Reflections And Shadows, Beautiful Poses

Do not call reflections - shadows; learn to distinguish between the two.

Always be on the look-out for a graceful movement when you are conversing with a person, thus you will learn.

Limits Of Art

Keep rigidly within the limits of your art, do not strive for the impossible, and so miss the possible.

On Reproduction

Never judge of the merits of a painting or piece of sculpture from reproductions.

Quality. Sentiment And Poetry

Every good work has "quality."

Do not mistake sentimentality for sentiment, and sentiment for poetry.

Spontaneity. Failure

Spontaneity is the life of a picture. Continual failure is a road to success - if you have the strength to go on.

Colour Of Landscape

The colour of a landscape viewed in the direction of the sun is almost unseen; therefore turn your back on the sun if you wish to see nature's colouring, and you do!

Christmas Cards And "Artistic" Opals

Do not emulate the producers of photographic Christmas cards and "artistic"(?) opals; they are all worthy of the bagman.

Finish

Do not mistake sharpness for truth, and burnish for finish.

Mystery

The charm of nature lies in her mystery and poetry, but no doubt she is never mysterious to a donkey.

Apparatus

It is not the apparatus that does the work, but the man who wields it.

Say as much as you can, with as little material as you can.

Good Work

Flatter no man, but spare not generous praise to really good work.

Vanity

Lash the insincere and petty homunculi who are working for vanity.

Artist And Artist-Photographer

Hold up to scorn every coxcomb who paints "artist-photographer" or "artist" on his door, or stamps it on his mounts.

On Publishing

Remember every photograph you publish goes out for better for worse, to raise you up or pull you down; do not be in haste, therefore, to give yourself over to the enemy.

On Success

By the envy, lying and slandering of the weak, the ignorant, and the vicious, shall you know you are succeeding, as well as by the sympathy and praise of the just, the generous, and the masters.

"Sharpness"

When a critic has nothing to tell you save that your pictures are not sharp, be certain he is not very sharp and knows nothing at all about it.

Interiors

Don t be led away to photograph bourgeois furnished interiors, they are not worth the silver on the plate for the pleasure they will give when done.

Greatness

The greater the work the simpler it looks and the easier it seems to do or to imitate, but it is not so.

Photographs As Historical Records

Photographic pictures may have one merit which no other pictures can ever have, they can be relied upon as historical records.

Art At Home

Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.

Nature And Pictures

People are educated to admire nature through pictures.

Science And Art

Science destroys or builds up, and seeks only for bald truth. Art seeks to give a truthful impression of some beautiful phenomenon or poetic fact, and destroys all that interferes with her purpose.

Topography

Topography is the registration of bald facts about a place; it is sometimes confounded with Art.

Art And Culture

The artistic faculty develops only with culture. A man may be a Newton and at the same time never get beyond the chromographic stage in art.

Individuality

Without individuality there can be no individual art, but remember that the value of the individuality depends on the man, for all the poetry is in nature, but different individuals see different amounts of it.

"Fiddle-Brown" Trees

Had Constable listened to rules we might have had "fiddle-brown" trees in our pictures to-day.

Naturalistic Works

Nature is full of surprises and subtleties, which give quality to a work, thus a truthful impression of her is never to be found in any but naturalistic works.

On Opinion In Art

The undeveloped artistic faculty delights in glossy and showy objects and in brightly coloured things. The appreciation of delicate tonality in monochrome or colour is the result of high development. The fru-givorous ape loves bright colour, and so does the young person of "culture," and the negress of the West Indies, but Corot delighted only in true and harmonious colouring.

Nature And Sanity. Busy Insanity

Nature whispers all her great secrets to the sane in mind, just as she delights in giving her best physical prizes to the sane in body. Nature abhors busy insanity.

"Stolen Bits"

Do not be surprised if you find "stolen bits of your photographs in the works of inferior etchers, aquarellists, and black and white draughtsmen; it pays them to steal, while it does not hurt you, for they cannot steal your "quality."

Sun And Shadows

Many photographers think they are photographing nature when they are only caricaturing her.

The sun when near the horizon gives longer shadows than when near the zenith.

Photography And Art

When writers tell you photography is one thing and art another, find out who they are, and you shall find their opinion on art-matters is contemptible, and it is only their omniscient impudence and fanaticism that allow them to contradict a sculptor like Adam Salomon, and a painter like T. F. Goodall, to say nothing of others.

Clearness

The shallow public like "clearness," they like to see the veins in the grass-blade and the scales on the butterfly's wing, for does it not remind them of the powerful vision of their periscopic ancestors - the Saurians.

Japers At Photography

When the vulgar herd jape at photography, stand firm and ask them if their long-eared ancestors did not jape at water-colour painting and at etching.

Criticism

Ask of critics only "fair play." Much of the criticism of to-day consists in the suppression of the truth of the author and the advocacy of the falsity of the critic. Criticism is as yet in the metaphysical stage, but it will one day become rational and of some worth. Then, critics will not attempt the huge joke of "placing" people in order like a pedagogue, e.g. Matthew Arnold between Gray and Wordsworth, as some wonderful person did not long ago in one of the reviews; but criticism will show us how works of art may serve to illustrate the life-history of different epochs. The huge farce of "placing" criticism will be one of the stock jokes of the twentieth century.