Spinners

Furniture, Genre: Women, Imitation Paintings, Interiors, Women: Occupational

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 15.0 x 18.9 cm | published May 30, 1890 | issue No. 454
Support Dimensions: 20.5 x 28.7 cm

Editorial comment on this plate:


The artistic figure picture which embellishes this number of The Photographic Times is from a negative by H. Edwards-Ficken, the architect.
The models were posed in an ordinary artist’s studio, with simply a northern light, without a skylight, and the exposure was made with a wide-angle lens. On being exhibited, the picture attracted the attention of one of New York’s best-known water-color artists, who immediately painted a picture from it, and exhibited it at the water-color exhibition of the Academy of Design, about three years ago, and sold it on the opening night for a large sum. The picture was little more than an enlargement from the photograph presented herewith, the same models being used, and the arrangement and lighting being almost precisely the same. The picture is a good example of pictorial possibilities in figure work with the camera.
“The studio in which this picture was made is not larger than an ordinary parlor of the usual city or country home,” writes Mr. Ficken, “so I can see no reason why good figure studies cannot be made without the skylight, with the same care and study I gave this.” He also writes, in regard to the reproduction, “I must say I rather like the green tone of it, it seems to give the picture a great deal of character.”
We are glad to see that amateurs are cultivating more and more this higher branch of photographic work.


center engraved below image:

But, hark! a rap comes gently to the door;
Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same,
Tells how a neebor lad cam o’er the moor,
To do some errands and convey her hame.
                                                   -Burns.