 |
|
||||||||||||||
| |||||||
Even The Camera Lucida: Even the Camera lucida demanded a modicum of skill in drawing. Throughout history the experimental amateurhas not been the one to accept either his shortcomings or the difficulties that block the professional. The fever for reality was running high. The physical aid of Camera obscura and Camera lucida had drawn men so near to an exact copying of nature and to satisfying the current craving for reality that they could not abide the intrusion of the pencil of man to close the gap. Only the pencil of nature would do. The same idea burned in many minds,and the race for discovery was on: to make light itself fix the image in the Camera without having to draw it by hand.The Camera lucida, which resembled the Camera obscura only in name and function, could easily be carried about and was widely used by travelers. Basil Hall used it to document his American travels; in the preface to Forty Etchings Made with the Camera, Lucida in North America, in 1827 and 1828 (Edinburgh, 1829) he praised the instrument that freed the amateur "from the triple misery of Perspective, Proportion and Form," and concluded that although Wollaston, its inventor, had not discovered the "Royal Road to Drawing," he had "at least succeeded in Macadamising the way already known."But to many amateurs "Macadamising" was not enough.
One of the first days of the month of October, 1833 [he later recollected], I was amusing myself on the lovely shores of the Lake of Como in Italy, taking sketches with Wollaston's Camera lucida, or rather, I should say, attempting to take them: but with the smallest possible amount of success. . . . After various fruitless attempts I laid aside the instrument and came to the conclusion that its use required a previous knowledge of drawing which unfortunately I did not possess. I then thought of trying again a method which I had tried many years before. |
|||||||
| Home | About Us | Contact Us | Site Map | Links | Library |
All Rights Reserved
