THE SMILE COMES OFF.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 12 January 1929, Page 16

THE SMILE COMES OFF.

I NEW FASHION FOR PHOTOGRAPHY. Politics lags behind fashion. Its devotees istiil smile in their pictures. The press has been burdened with smilling candidates; some of them can now easily, if not cheerfully, adopt tbe new faisiinon, for “photography,” we are told in the London ‘Daily Express,” “has taken the old masters for models, and the camera portrait now aims at reproducing tlie interest experience, and meaning in a face, rather than the explosive affability of the old! smiling picture.” So a “famous London piiotographer”— otherwise not identified—deavei’is himself: “The smiling portrait has died out because people have discovered how tired they get, of a perpetual ismiie. The only ismiie we don’t get tired 1 of is the child’s and that is the only smile that is entirely natural. Among paintings there is one exception—the ‘Laughing Cavalier,’ we never get tired of him.” Then the interviewer looks about him to confirm the expert: ' “The graceful women on the walls of the Royal Academy have grave faces. Even the familiar photography of actresses rely for their effect on the simple lines of facial repose, and abandon the crude' smile for a subtler range of expression in the eyes. No photograph in these days dives under hiis velvet cloth with the old familiar, ‘Smile, ptease’ —judging from the thoughtful faces and careful -line-coni - pO'Si.tion in the window of any studio. “In. Marie Lloyd’s day it was different. Then a photograph meant a smile, and a smiLa meant alii the teeth that could be shown without actual contortion. Ail actresses smiled and moist society beauties ; but nowadays it must be admitted that, as far as portraiture is concerned, the smile has died a natural death.

“The pliotographer’is mention of the ‘Laughing Cavalier’ may set you trying to remember what pictures you know in which the brush nas caught forever that most elusive of all expressions—the spontaneous",siriile. In the average person’s memory there will scarcely be more' than half a dozen, and' thetse* few collected from among many centuries and 'lands.

“You may walk 'the galleries for hours without finding even the ghost, of a smile watching you from a canvas, for they are few and far between. In Florence! you can see, among Botticelli's wistful Madonnas, a pagan goddess who smiles faintly, with a world of tolerance in her eyes. But- the ‘Primavera’ of Botticelli does not show her teeth. “The dedicate genius of Leonardo caught the fugitive ambiguity of the smile more surely, perhaps, than any other. Hiis ‘S'ainte Anne’ is only on the verge of a. smile. There is the ‘Mona Lisa,’ whose smile is the best known in tho world, but which makes u s afraid and regretful, and ultimately wiser, rather than happy. His ‘John the Baptist,’ smooth-browed and pointing heavenward, lias the kindly, doubtful simile of persuasion. “Hogarth could sometimes paint an honest, grin. His ‘Shrimp. Girl’ really smiles; she has been startled into it.

“The photographer seem® to have spoken the truth about the. child’s smile, when we look at the children of Reynolds. There is the ‘Portrait of Master Hare’ in tho Louvre, a. mice, contented child waving good-bye, with the farewell smile lingering in his eyes and the corners of his mouth; and that lovely little round-eyed girl, ‘Miss Bowles,’ hugging a spaniel tightly. “Children can hold a smile without effort, but. before the advent of the camera the famous beauties seem to have been reluctant to risk it. Nell Gwyn, in Lely’s famous portrait, al-

most smiles; her face is by no means in repose, hut it is not wreathed in the later facial pleasantries. The lovely Lady Hamilton smiles, and this is nearer our own day.”