The Stereoscope by David Brewster — Read

To the arts of sculpture and architecture, the processes of binocular photography and stereoscopic combination are particularly applicable. The landscape painter has every day within his reach examples of the picturesque, the wild and the sublime in nature. In the fields which surround him, in the river, or even in the "brook that bubbles by," on the shore, on the heath, or on the mountain side, he has the choice of materials for every department of his art. The sculptor has no such advantage. Swathed in impenetrable drapery the human figure mocks his eager eye, and it is only by stolen glances, or during angel visits, few and far between, that he can see those divine forms which it is his business to portray. He must therefore quit his home and seek for the models of ancient and modern art. In the British Museum, in the Louvre, in the Vatican, and in the repositories of art in Berlin, Munich, and other European cities, he must spend months and years in the study of his profession.

He must copy, day after day, those master triumphs of genius which the taste of ages has consecrated, and gather from their study the true principles of his art. Transferred to his own studio, these copies will be his instructor and his guide. They will exhibit to him forms more than human, though human still, embodying all that is true and beautiful in what might be man. The value of these copies, however, depends on the skill and care with which they have been taken; but no labour however great, and no power of drawing however masterly, can give even an approximate idea either of the outline or round of solid figures, whether single or in groups. Light and shade can alone evolve those muscular prominences, or those soft and sphere-like relievos which give such power and beauty to forms, male and female; but how can an artist catch and fix those lights and shades which give relief to the parts which they illuminate or obscure? The light of the sun, even in a cloudless sky, is ever varying in intensity, and the breadth and direction of the shadows which he casts are varying from hour to hour. In a cloudy day, the motion of the clouds, and the varying reflexions within his apartment, subject the lights and shadows to constant change. The portions of the drawing executed in the morning will not harmonize with what is drawn at noon, or during the decline of day. We consider it, therefore, impossible to execute a drawing of a statue, or of a group of statues, from which the artist can have anything like an accurate idea of the forms which compose them.