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Many of his better known works were produced in London and famous people
such as Alfred Lord Tennyson and Lewis Carroll came for a sitting.
Oscar married Mary Bull at Pancras Register Office, London, on September 30
1862, he was 48 and she was 24. She had appeared on many of his photographs that
were taken in Wolverhampton from 1853 onwards, so they had known each other for
some time.
He read a paper at a meeting of the South London Photographic Society on 12th
February, 1863. In the paper entitled "An Apology For Art Photography" he
described how he became interested in photography and his first lessons in
London:
"In 1852 I was in Rome, and saw photographs of the Apollo Belvidere,
the Laocoon, the Torso, Gibson's Venus,
etc., etc., which I bought and studied; and I was delighted to have a fair
chance of measuring the relative proportions of the antique on the flat and true
copies of the originals. That was my first acquaintance with the fair results of
photography. I merely recollected having seen some reddish landscape photographs
the year before at Ackermann's, in Regent Street, but these made no impression
on me. What I saw in the Exhibitions of 1851 had proved as evanescent as looking
at myself in a glass; " out of sight omit of mind." They were all
Daguerreotypes. It awakened in me at the moment nothing but curiosity. But in
Rome I was fairly taken with the capabilities of the art, so I made up my mind
to study photography as soon as I returned to England.
My view at this period, to the best of my recollection, did not extend
farther than showing me the usefulness of photography in enabling me to take
children's portraits, in aid of painting, and for studies for foregrounds in
landscapes.
In 1853, having inquired in London for a good teacher, I was directed to
Henneman. We agreed for so much for three or five lessons; but, as I was in a
hurry to get back to the country, I took all the lessons during one afternoon;
three hours in the calotype and waxed-paper process, and half-an-hour sufficed
for the collodion process!! He spoke, I wrote; but I was too clever. It would
have saved me a year or more of trouble and expense had I attended carefully to
the rudiments of the art for a month."
He went on to describe some of his early attempts:
"I cannot forbear mentioning that some of the earliest portraits that I
took, and which I had sensitised with ammonia-nitrate, are as vigorous now as
they were then, although they had but three changes of water; ten minutes or a
quarter-of-an-hour in each dish after hypo., as my instructor had told me; while
others, and later, according to the usual process, have proved as treacherous as
a bad memory. At length Maxwell Lyte let his light in on my manipulations by the
publication of the alkaline gold-toning process. At that time I was nearly
giving up photography. I felt as if I were only writing in sand.
My first attempt at "double printing," as some call it, was exhibited in
London in 1855. It was named in the catalogue Groupe Printed from Three
Negatives. That plan I hit upon through sheer vexation, because I could
not get a gentleman's figure in focus, though he was close behind a sofa on
which two ladies were seated. Up to this time I considered postures on the
principle of bas reliefs; it is as few foreshortenings as possible; but now I
felt freer."
He later gave his feelings on the relationship between photography and
painting:
"I believe photography will make painters better artists and more careful
draughtsmen. You may test their figures by photography. In Titian's Venus
and Adonis, Venus has her head turned in a manner that no female could
turn it and at the same time shows so much of her back. Her right leg also is
too long. I have proved the correctness of this opinion by photography with
variously shaped female models. In Peace and War, by Reubens, the
back of the female with the basket is painted from a male, as proved by the same
test.
The real good old painters, such as Raffaelle, Leonardo da Vinci, Luini,
Velasquez, Teniers, Titian; you often find reflected in photography in apparent
finish and effect.
There are many ways in which photography can prove useful to artists,
although few of them are aware of it. Here is one. After they have made their
sketch, or uncoloured cartoon, they may have a photograph taken from it; and
then on the prepared albumen paper they may play with colours as much as they
like, until they arrive at what they wish for their painting; for a wet brush
removes any colour objected to, just as if it had never been there, yet the
outline underneath remains the same."
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