Any one who has experienced a lantern slide exhibition of art, where picture after picture follows rapidly and the crowd expresses judgment by applause, will not long be in doubt what pictures make the strongest appeal. The “crowd” applauds three types; something recognized as familiar, the “happy hit,” especially of title, and, (not knowing why) all pictures, without regard to subject, _which express unity._ The first two classes are not a part of this argument, but of the last, the natural, spontaneous attraction of the healthy mind by what is complete through unity contains such reason as cannot be ignored. Subjects of equal or greater interest which antagonize unity fall flat before this jury.
There is no opportunity more valuable to the amateur photographer than the lantern slide exhibition, and the fact that even now no more than ten or twelve per cent. of what is shown is pictorially good should provoke a search for the remedy.
For the student, to fill the eye full of good compositions and to know why good, is of equal value with the study of faulty composition to discover why bad.
The challenge of compositions neither good nor bad to discover wherein they could be improved is better practice than either.
This is the constant exercise of every artist, the ejection of the sand grains from his easy running machinery.
Before photography became a fashion it was the writer’s privilege to meet a county physician who had cultivated for himself a critical picture sense. The lines of his circuit lay among the pleasantest of pastoral scenes. Stimulated by their beauty it became his habit, as he travelled, to mark off the pictures of his route, to note where two ran together, to decide what details were unnecessary, or where, by leaving the highway and approaching or retiring he discovered new ones. After a time he bought a Claude Lorraine glass. It was shortly after this purchase that I met him. His enthusiasm was delightful. With this _framing of his views_ his judgment grew sensitive and as he showed these mirrored pictures to friends who rode with him he was most particular at just what point he stopped his horse. The man for whom picture galleries were a rarity, talked as intelligently upon the fundamental structure of pictures as most artists.