as its logic might intimate, but which is worth quoting from
the prophecy which it contained, there have been many expressions of
opinions by photographers. None, however, are more to the point than the
following from the pen of Mr. F. H. Wilson: "When, fifty years ago, the
new baby, photography, was born, Science and Art stood together over her
cradle questioning what they might expect of her, wondering what place she
would take among their other children. Science soon found that she had
come with her hands full of gifts and her bounty to astronomy, microscopy
and chemistry made her name blessed among these, her elder sisters. Art,
always more conservative, hung back. But slowly jealous Art who first
frowned and called the rest of her brood around her, away from the
parvenue, has let her come near, has taken her hand, and is looking her
over with questioning eyes. Soon, without doubt, she will have her on her
lap with the rest."
"Why has she been kept out so long? Almost from the beginning she claimed
a place in the house beautiful of art. In spite of rebuffs she knocked at
its doors, though the portrait painter and the critic flung stones at her
from the house-top, and the law itself stood at the threshold denying her
entrance. Those early efforts were not untinctured with a fear that if
she should get in she would run the establishment, but the law long since
owned her right, and instead of the crashing boulders of artistic dislike
and critical indignation the volleys they drop at her feet now are mere
mossy pebbles flung by similarly mossy critics or artist-bigots. Still,
the world at large hears them rattle and does not give her the place and
estimation she has won."
"Art began with the first touch of man to shape things toward his ideal,
be that ideal an agreeable composition, or the loftiest conception of
genius. The higher it is the more it is art. Art is head-and-hand work
and a creation deserves the name of art according to the quality and
quantity of this expended on it. Simply sit down squarely before a thing
and imitate it as an ox would if an ox could draw, with no thought or
intention save imitation and the result will cry from every line, 'I am
not art but machine work,' though its technique be perfection. Toil over
arrangement and meditate over view-point and light, and though the result
be the rudest, it will bear the impress of thought and of art. I tell you
art begins when man with tho
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