In portraiture, our Irish brethren of the camera contribute somewhat liberally. In that branch we noticed the works of Messrs. Robertson and Co., S. Lawrence, and G. Schroeder, of Grafton Street; Millard and Robinson, Nelson and Marshall, and S. Chancellor, of Sackville Street, Dublin. T. Cranfield, Grafton Street, also exhibits some photographs beautifully coloured in oil.
The most eminent English photographers also show up well. We saw the well-known works of Mayall, Silvy, Claudet, Maull and Co., and others, eminent in plain photography. Messrs. Lock and Whitfield exhibit a Royal case of exquisitely coloured photographs of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Prince Albert Victor. Mr. G. Wharton Simpson also exhibits a few specimens of his beautiful collodio-chloride of silver printing process. There are some lovely specimens of that process with such a frightfully ugly name, but which, in plain parlance, are pictures on opal glass, though Mr. Helsby has christened them "Helioaristotypia miniatures." As a set-off to this, the next dry process that is discovered should be called "Hydrophobiatypia."
In amateur portraiture, Mr. H. Cooper, Jun., exhibits a large number of his clever life studies, as well as those quiet and charming representations of his friends in their habits as they live.
Solar camera enlargements are very numerously contributed. Mr. Claudet sends some good pictures enlarged by solar camera, and developed with gallic acid. Mr. Salomon also has some very good examples of enlarging. Dr. D. Van Monckhoven is an exhibitor of the capabilities of his direct printing camera. Mr. Mayall exhibits two series of very interesting enlargements by the Monckhoven camera, printed direct on albumenized paper; one is Tennyson, in eight different sizes, from a one-ninth to a life-size head on a whole sheet of paper; of the other, Captain Grant, there are seven similar pictures. These photographs are all bold and vigorous and uniform in colour, and come nearer to our idea of what an enlargement should be than anything we have yet seen. Of the two, that of the Poet-Laureate is the best; the other is harsher, which is in all probability due to the difference in the subjects themselves. We can easily imagine that the face of Captain Grant, bronzed and weather-beaten as it must be, will present more obstacles to the obtaining of a soft negative than that of Tennyson. Specimens of photo-sculpture are also to be seen at the Dublin Exhibition, many of which are very pretty and life-like statuettes; but some of the figures seem much too large in the _busts_, and the plinths on which the figures of ladies stand are in very bad taste; being diminishing beads of a circular form, they suggest the idea of a huge crinoline just dropped.