1855 THE ATHENAEUM
Journal of English and foreign Literature, science, and the Fine Arts
1855 [no vol. #s]
ver: Oct. 24, 2009 (London)
--This journal does NOT have volume #s, only issue #s.
--These articles have been transcribed directly from the originals in the V&A Art Library; NO copies made, some have been photographed. When articles were photographed, a reference has been made and beginning words transcribed to insure association of photos w/ bib. refs.
--Ads = only checked in spotty manner; they are listed together then they occur. More thorough search needed when time permits.
TO DO: Add bold to names
NOTES:
--Italics have been retained from publications, which use them for both titles as well as emphasis. To more easily locate image titles, I have continued this italicization when titles have been rendered in all capitols or put in quotes, however italics have NOT been used when the general subject of an image is mentioned.
--Spelling and typos: Nineteenth-century spellings occasionally differs from currently accepted norms. In addition, British spellings also differ from American usage. Common examples are: “colour” vs. “color”; “centre” vs. “center’” the use of “s” for “z” as in “recognise” vs. “recognize; and the use of one “l” instead of “ll” as in “fulfilment”. While great care has been exercised in transcribing the 19th-century journals exactly as printed, “spell check” automatically corrects many of these differences. An attempt has been made to recorrect these automatic changes, but no doubt some have slipped through. As for typographical errors, these have been checked although no doubt some have managed to slip through the editorial process. For matters of consequence, I will be happy to recheck the original sources if need be for specific references.
--Image numbers listed in articles can be either an entry number in an exhibition, or the photographer’s own image number as found on labels.
--All names have been bolded for easy location. Numbers frequently refer to the photographer’s image number, but can also refer to a number in a catalog for a show. Decide whether to bold or not if can tell.
--It is not always possible in lists of photographers to know when two separate photographers are partners or not, e.g., in a list, “Smith and Jones” sometimes alludes to two separate photographers and sometimes to one photographic company. Both names will be highlighted and indexed but a partnership may be wrongly assumed. Any information to the contrary would be appreciated.
-- Brackets [ ] are used to indicate supplied comments by the transcriber; parenthesis
( ) are used in the original sources. If the original source has used brackets, they have been transcribed as parenthesis to avoid confusion.
--“illus” means that I have the view mentioned and should be scanned and included.
--Articles by photographers about technical matters – when transcribed, only names and titles have been listed. If other names are associated with the paper they are listed as well.
--Meetings of Societies – Names of officers, members attending or referenced, dates and locations of meetings have been given. If the reports are very short or discuss photographs, then the articles have been copied; if administrative or technical in nature, they have not.
--“[Selection]” = This has been used when not all portions of a feature are copied, such as The Photographic News’ “Talk In The Studio”. If the word does not appear, then the entire feature was transcribed.
-- Some journals, e.g., The Art-Journal, cover both photographer and painting/drawing. As they frequently refer to the production of both the photographer and the painter as “pictures” it is not always possible to tell when photography is indicated. If there is doubt, it will be included but a note will be added stating that the names listed may in fact not be photographers.
--Mostly articles totally discussing technical aspects of photography, products, etc. are not transcribed unless they are part of a larger article covering photographs. When technical descriptions are too lengthy to transcribe that is noted.
--Cultural sensitivity – these are direct transcriptions of texts written in the 19th-century and reflect social comments being made at that time. Allowances must be made when reading some texts, particularly those dealing with other cultures.
1855: Athenaeum, Jan. 6, issue #1419, p. 22: [quick check; no ad found]
Photographic Delineations of the Scenery, Architecture and Antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland. By Russel [sic] Sedgefield [sic]. Part I. Highley.
The first number of this valuable record of antiquarian art contains five illustrations:--the Norman Tower, Bury St. Edmunds, the Abbey Gate, Bury St. Edmunds, the South Transept, Norwich Cathedral, the west Front of Binham Priory, Norfolk, and Part of the Cloisters, Norwich Cathedral. For the antiquarians and architects to whom nothing is valuable without it be accurate this work will be of the utmost use. The artist is satisfied with good light and shade and colour, whether the original has it or not; he cannot sell without them:--the poet wants romance, suggestiveness and situation; and if he can get these, he will make up monstrous buildings for his backgrounds, half truth and half fancy;--but the historian and the architect want drawings that can be given in on oath,-- and the curve of a single moulding may fix an important date or overturn a theory.
At present we see no plan in this work. Why not collect first all your specimens of Norman, and proceed seriatim to the Early English and Decorated?—or, why not take a single country and exhaust it, from town to village?
Were it not for the imperfection of parts,--the dark blots and the slurring exaggeration of surfaces of light,--we could gaze at these scenes till our reason grew deceived by the reality of their atmosphere. The eye wanders untired over their exhaustless details, their variety of surface, the extraordinary subtlety and softness of light and shade,--taking in more at once than it could even in nature. We see the very aspect of the hour,--the air of the month and season,--the exact stage of decay, of hardness or softness, of rough and smooth,--and knowing that in all these phases nature teaches lessons of unity, at the heart of change, permanence surrounded by evanescence, the war of good and evil, of hope and despair, of night and day, of joy and sorrow, we find very impressive sermons in the shadows of such stones.
1855: Athenaeum, Jan. 20, #1421, p. 86: PHOTO MADE – TRANSCRIBE
Photographic Society:
[text starts with: If universal Art progressed as fast as this small scientific branch of it, we might soon look for new Phidiases and new Raphaels. The second annual Exhibition….
2nd col. starts with: and etchings. It is rather as thus superseding
and text ends with: All conversant with that pleasant book of Miss Howitt’s ‘The Art-Student’ will be glad to see in this Exhibition, copies of Kaulbach’s Cartoons, described by her when at Munich.
1855: Athenaeum, March 10, #1428, p. 297:
Photographic Pleasures, popularly portrayed with Pen and Pencil. by Cuthbert Bede, B.A. M’Lean.
Mr. “Bede” is more likely than ourselves to know if there be a photographic public large enough to render such a book as his popular,--for if there be not, we are afraid “positives and negatives, and baths and sensitives” are terms still strange to the world at large.
The ludicrous side of Photography is fair game for the caricaturist. We all know the foggy eclipses that are called family groups,--the pale, ghostly visions that are “astonishing likenesses but not quite successful.” There is much fun in the luckless artist under the hood , unconscious of the bull that is charging him behind,--in the Irishman who is rapping at the tempting head under the daguerreotypist’s tent,--in the indignant farmer who is kicking down the apparatus of the mild chemist in spectacles. We rejoice at the misery of the fat photographer on Ulverstone Sands surprised by the tide. We smile at the grim man with his head in a frame trying to look cheerful to order,--at the scientific young lady who has tattooed herself with nitrate of silver, and we dare say old ladies have entreated the mercy of photographers, believing the machine to be explosive and about to firer. The pleasures of daguerreotyping are well shown in the interesting sisters that the young artist is “focusing”;--the miseries of the art in the group of children washing “Pa’s bottles”—the farmer pursuing the supposed surveyor—and the village boys rushing to the apparent peep-show.
With much cleverness Mr. “Bede” has seized the salient points of the new art, and turned them into good-humoured, but rather too technical, jokes. The photographing criminals are well sketched, with much of Mr. Cruikshank’s broad-grin style. There is almost too much letter-press:--eighty-three pages on a subject not worth more than a long chapter is rather tiring, and without illustrations would be unbearable.
1855, Athenaeum, May 19, #1438, p. 588:
Our Weekly Gossip: [extract]
[ltr. to ed. from H.L. in re indignation on money spent restoring the Tower of London]
1855, Athenaeum, May 19, #1438, p. 588: PHOTOGRAPHED
Our Weekly Gossip: [extract]
[W.S. Woodin’s new dramatic entertainment, “The Olio of Oddities”]
1855, Athenaeum, Sept. 29, #1457, p. 1117-1118: PHOTOGRAPHED
Fine Arts: Photographs from the Crimea.
2nd page text col. 1 starts with: ribbon will be conferred
“ middle section: Lacy Evans
“ bottom section: Every regiment and every branch
col. 2 starts with: teen and ponderous equipment
“ middle section: for the Trenches
“ bottom section: The landscapes, though of scenes nor engraven
col. 3 starts with: with vault and embrasure.
1855 Athenaeum, Oct. 27, #1461, p. 1245: PHOTOGRAPHED
Fine Arts: New Publications:
Photographs, from the Campo Santo at Pisa. Florence, Bardi; London, Molino.
1855 Athenaeum, Oct. 27, #1461, p. 1245: PHOTOGRAPHED (col. 2 of above photo)
Fine Arts: New Publications:
Portrait of W. H. Russell, “Our Special Correspondent.” Drawn by J. H. Lynch, from a Photograph by R. Fenton.
1855 Athenaeum, Dec. 22, #1469, p. 1500:
Our Weekly Gossip: [extract]
A set of photographs, taken by Mr. Robertson in the Crimea, are on view at Mr. Kilburn’s Gallery in Regent Street. The more interesting scenes are, interiors of the Redan and the Malakoff batteries, depicted with a startling fidelity. No pictures that we have seen convey so terrible an impression to the eye of those wondrous works, and of the many ingenious contrivances by which the Muscovites had made them tenable in the face of a fire so destructive as that which hailed on the doomed city during the later bombardments.