Monday, February 19, 2018

Preserved Fragments of Selective Visibility from the 1850s

Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story-Maskelyne
Charlton House, Malmesbury, Wiltshire
1856
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Photographer
Portrait of seated Man with Skull
1855
stereograph
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

William Edward Kilburn
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1852-55
daguerreotype
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Claude-Marie Ferrier & Friedrich von Martens
Glass Fountain by Follett Osler in the Crystal Palace
at the Great Exhibition of 1851, London
1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Claude-Marie Ferrier & Friedrich von Martens
Doors decorated with malachite
at the Great Exhibition of 1851, London
1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Claude-Marie Ferrier & Friedrich von Martens
 Pedestal carved by Friedrich Drake for King Frederick William III of Prussia
at the Great Exhibition of 1851, London
1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Claude-Marie Ferrier & Friedrich von Martens
Repoussé Vase in Silver by Antoine Vechte for Hunt & Roskill
at the Great Exhibition of 1851, London
1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Claude-Marie Ferrier & Friedrich von Martens
 Sculpture of Hunter with Dog by John Gibson
at the Great Exhibition of 1851, London
1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Claude-Marie Ferrier & Friedrich von Martens
Sculptures of Nymph and Hunter by Edward Hodges Baily
at the Great Exhibition of 1851, London
1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Claude-Marie Ferrier & Friedrich von Martens
Sculpture of Youth on Riverbank by Henry Foley
at the Great Exhibition of 1851, London
 1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

attributed to Hugh Owen
Sèvres Porcelain
at the Great Exhibition of 1851, London
1851
salted paper print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1851: A Message to Denmark Hill

     The writer is John Ruskin, on his wedding journey in Venice

My dearest father, it is the year's First Day
     Yet so like the Last, in Venice, no one
          Could tell this birth from the lees.
               I know it is some while
Since you received a word of mine: there has been
     The shabbiest sort of interruption
          To our exchanges (to mine
               At least) in the shape
Of a fever – nights of those imaginings,
     Strange but shameful too, of the Infinite
          By way of bedcovers and
               Boa constrictors,
With cold wedges of ice, as I thought, laid down
     At the corners of the bed, making me
          Slip to its coiling center
               Where I could not breathe.
You knew from my last, I think, I had again
     Gone to the Zoological Gardens
          And seen the great boa take
               Rabbits, which gave me
An idea or two, and a headache. Then
     I had too much wine that same night, & dreamed
          Of a walk with Nurse, to whom
               I showed a lovely
Snake I promised her was an innocent one:
     It had a slender neck with a green ring
          Round it, and I made her feel
               The scales. When she bade
Me feel them too, it turned into a fat thing, like
     A leech, and adhered to my hand, so that
          I could scarcely pull it off –
               And I awakened
(So much, father, for my serpentine fancies)
     To a vermillion dawn, fever fallen,
          And the sea horizon dark,
               Sharp and blue, and far
Beyond it, faint with the trebled distance, came on
     The red vertical cliffs in a tremor
          Of light I could not see without
               Recalling Turner
Who had taught me to see it, yet the whole
     Subdued to one soft gray. And that morning
          I had your letter, father,
               Telling of the death
Of my earthly master. How much more I feel
     This now (perhaps it is worth noting here
          The appearance of my first
               Gray hair, this morning)
– More than I thought I should: everything
     In the sun, in the sky speaks of him,
          So mourns their Great Witness lost.
               Today, the weather
Is wretched, cold and rainy, dark like England
     At this season. I do begin to lose
          All faith in these provinces.
               Even the people
Look to me ugly, except children from eight
     To fourteen, who here as in Italy
          Anywhere are glorious:
               So playful and bright
In expression, so beautiful in feature,
     So dark in eye and soft in hair – creatures
          Quite unrivalled. At fifteen
               They degenerate
Into malignant vagabonds, or sensual
     Lumps of lounging fat. And this latter-day
          Venice, father! where by night
               The black gondolas
Are just traceable beside one, as if Cadmus
     Had sown the wrong teeth and grown dragons, not
          Men. The Grand Canal, this month,
               Is all hung, from end
To end, with carpets and tapestries like a street
     Of old-clothes warehouses. And now there is
          Even talk of taking down,
               Soon, Tintoretto's
Paradise to "restore" it. Father, without
     The Turner Gallery, I do believe
          I should go today and live
               In a cave on some
Cliffside – among crows. Oh what fools they are, this
     Restoring pack, yet smoothing all manner
          Of rottenness up with words.
               My Turner would not
Phrase like these, and only once in all the years
     I knew him said, "Thank you, Mr. Ruskin."
          My own power, if it be that,
               Would be lost by mere
Fine Writing. You know I promised no Romance –
     I promised them Stones. Not even bread.
          Father, I do not feel any
               Romance in Venice!
Here is no "abiding city," here is but
     A heap of ruins trodden underfoot
          By such men as Ezekiel
               Angrily describes,
Here are lonely and stagnant canals, bordered
     For the most part by blank walls of gardens
          (Now waste ground) or by patches
               Of mud, with decayed
Black gondolas lying keel-upmost, sinking
     Gradually into the putrid soil.
          To give Turner's joy of this
               Place would not take ten
Days of study, father, or of residence:
     It is more than joy that must be the great
          Fact I would teach. I am not sure,
               Even, that joy is
A fact. I am certain only of the strong
     Instinct in me (I cannot reason this)
          To draw, delimit the things
               I love – oh not for
Reputation or the good of others or
     My own advantage, but a sort of need,
          Like that for water and food.
               I should like to draw
All Saint Mark's, stone by stone, and all this city,
     Oppressive and choked with slime as it is
          (Effie of course declares, each
               Day, that we must leave:
A woman cannot help having no heart, but
     That is hardly a reason she should have
          No manners), yes, to eat it
               All into my mind –
Touch by touch. I have been reading Paradise
     Regained lately, father. It seems to me
          A parallel to Turner's
               Last pictures – the mind
Failing altogether, yet with intervals
     And such returns of power! "Thereupon
          Satan, bowing low his gray
               Dissimulation,
Disappeared." Now he is gone, my dark angel,
     And I never had such a conception
          Of the way I must mourn – not
               What I lose, now, but 
What I have lost, until now. Yet there is more
     Pain knowing that I must forget it all,
          That in a year I shall have
               No more awareness
Of his loss than of that fair landscape I saw, 
     Waking, the morning your letter arrived,
          No more left about me than
               A fading pigment.
All the present glory, like the present pain,
     Is no use to me; it hurts me rather
          From my fear of leaving it,
               Of losing it, yet
I know that were I to stay here, it would soon
     Cease being glory to me – that it has
          Ceased, already to produce
               The impression and
The delight. I can bear only the first days
     At a place, when all the dread of losing
          Is lost in the delirium
               Of its possession.
I daresay love is very well when it does not
     Mean leaving behind, as it does always,
          Somehow, with me. I have not
               The heart for more now,
Father, though I thank you and Mother for all
     The comfort of your words. They bring me,
          With his loss, to what I said
               Once, the lines on this
Place you will know: "The shore lies naked under
     The night, pathless, comfortless and infirm
          In dark languor, still except
               Where salt runlets plash
Into tideless pools, or seabirds flit from their
     Margins with a questioning cry."  The light
          Is gone from the waters with
               My fallen angel,
Gone now as all must go. Your loving son,
                                                     JOHN
             
– by Richard Howard, originally published (1969) in Untitled Subjects, a book that went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1970           

Francis Frith
Pyramids at Giza
ca. 1856-60
albumen print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Francis Frith
Pyramids at Sakkara
ca. 1856-60
albumen print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Francis Frith
Pyramid of Amenemhat at Dashur
ca. 1856-57
albumen print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam