HF The History of Photography 600pág

Landscape and architectural photography 283
contemporary topographical artists. His photographs are full of atmosphere and
show a most careful observation of the play of light and shade, the most essential
feature in architectural and sculptural photographs, if they are to be infused with a
life which they lack as subjects.
Orignially a surgeon in Edinburgh, Robert MacPherson had settled in Rome for
health reasons in the early 184os, where he exchanged the surgeon's scalpel for the
painter's brush. He became a friend of artists and men ofletters, including Thackeray,
and a noted connoisseur of art whose services were indispensable to collectors. His
knowledge led him to discover a number of valuable paintings, among them a
Michelangelo now at the National Gallery, London. But painting and art dealing
were in turn superseded by photography when in 1851 an old medical friend from
Edinburgh visited Rome with his camera. The then new and fascinating art of
photography at once attracted MacPherson, who perceived its value in a place so
rich in art treasures as Rome; and just as his friend, who had little skill, was almost
giving it up, he joined him in his photographic pursuits and speedily mastered the
technical difficulties. His splendid views of the principal classical sites were soon in
great demand by tourists. A hundred years ago Rome was a favourite winter resort
of the English aristocracy-great collectors of art. Under Ruskin's influence, they
paid scant attention to the palaces and churches of the Renaissance and Baroque
periods, which in consequence figure less frequently in MacPherson's output than
views of Republican and Imperial Rome. Within a year or two MacPherson gained Pl l 59
the reputation of being the leading architectural photographer in Italy, a position
difficult to maintain in face of the excellent work produced by JAMES ANDERSON in
Rome, the brothers ALINARI in Florence, and CARLO PONTI in Venice.
MacPherson first worked with the albumen process, but in l 8 56 changed over to
the somewhat quicker collodio-albumen, which still retained the advantage that the
plates could be prepared beforehand and developed at home-a necessity for working
at the Vatican, where no photographic darkroom work was allowed to be carried
out. Here MacPherson photographed all the important sculptures-over three
hundred of them-about which he published a guidebook in l 863. Exposures with
'dry' preserved collodion were very long, particularly as MacPherson worked with
very large negative sizes, 12 in. x 16 in., 16 in. x 18 in., and even 18 in. x 22 in. 'For
a distant landscape in good light', he wrote, '5 minutes is enough ; for near objects,
10 to 20 minutes, and in some of the sculpture galleries where the light is deficient,
two hours were often required, and in one or two cases even an exposure of two days
was necessary to produce a good negative.'10
Though best known for his Roman views, MacPherson also occasionally went
outside the city for his subjects. He photographed at Perugia and Assisi, but apart
from Tivoli and the Falls of Terni, there are few landscapes in his opus. But whether Pl 157
he focused on the famous Cascatelle or on a group of cypress trees in the garden of
the Villa d'Este, he always created pictures of surpassing beauty, which were not
dependent exclusively on the beauty of the scenery.
Only a Philistine could complain of 'lack of mathematical precision' in Mac­
Pherson's photographs, but such Philistines existed in photographic circles in 1858
no less than today, vide the review in The Photographic News, December 1858. In
contrast to this unwarranted criticism, The Art Journal wrote in terms of the highest
praise: 'It has been left to photography to picture Rome in such detail as it is not the
province of painting to attempt . ... In the light and shade of these ruins there is a
sentiment which, with the stern truth of the photograph, affects the mind more
deeply than a qualified essay in painting.'11