Fred
Payne Clatworthy—Landscape Photographer
ART
AND PROGRESS—October, 1914
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N one of the lovely
Alpine valleys—high in the Rocky Mountains which form what is called Estes
Park, Colorado, is the studio of the artist photographer, four of whose pictures
[too dark to scan] are reproduced in this number of ART AND PROGRESS.
Mr. Clatworthy is
primarily a lover of nature, especially in her grandest and loneliest aspects.
He has followed her call through all the beauty spots of the West, usually on foot
and with only a camera as his sole means of expression. His chosen work has
required an open-air life far from the encroachments of man, tramps of
literally thousands of miles and inexhaustible enthusiasm for natural beauty
wherever found.
The enlarged photographs
in sepia exhibited in his studio show the scenes he loves best—snow-capped
mountain peaks, purple shadowed canyons, rushing mountain torrents and quiet
glacial lakes, misty waterfalls, lonely outstanding pine trees, snow scenes,
alluring mountain trails and roads through pine forests and steep rocky
ascents. Like the Japanese he has one particular mountain which dominates most
of his
In the pursuit of
adequate expression for what he has been privileged to see he has developed a
remarkable technique and his "instinctive sense of selection and intuitive
feeling for composition" have served to place his work on a plane which
good authorities have declared to be unexcelled in his particular field. His
pictures are composed and taken with infinite care though the selection of
subject, the viewpoint and lighting are matters of instinctive choice, often made
when not in pursuit of pictures. In such cases he will return to the scenes
determined upon and wait for hours for the right lights and shadows or actually
in part compose the foreground which he considers to be two-thirds the artistic
value of his pictures. Often his photographic trips may be entirely barren of
results, the artist in him knowing whether his camera box encloses any real
"pictures." Others may copy his identical viewpoints, but, ignoring
some of the delicate values, fail to secure the artistic ensemble. He affirms
that it is in the composition of the picture, not in the perfection of the
lens, that success lies, much of his best work having been done when he has had
along only a cheap camera. He does not care for what he calls "mere effects,"
being interested chiefly in depicting characteristic landscapes. In Colorado,
the land of sunshine and clear-as-crystal atmosphere, he delights to interpret
the sharp outlines of the mountains with sunlight and shadow playing upon them.
Artists with mastery of
the technique of painting have in several instances secured ideas in subject
and composition from his photographs. Visitors to the scenes he has reproduced
are especially impressed with the perfection with which he has caught the
characteristic spirit of the scenery, and this explains the satisfaction they
feel in possessing his pictures to carry away with them. In the Colorado
Rockies Mr. Clatworthy has been particularly fortunate in finding his chosen
subjects, but he has been equally happy in views he has secured in the further
West. The first chance to secure pictures of the kind he loves best ,vas in a
camping trip to the Southwest in 1898 when several hundred photographs were
made among the cattle ranches of New Mexico and the cliff dwellings, petrified
forest and the Grand Canyon of Arizona. On this trip he walked six hundred
miles from central New Mexico to the Grand Canyon, this being before the
building of the present railroad. He was often more than one hundred miles from
any railroad and carried his photographic 'outfit on the backs of burros over
rocky trails to places seldom pictured.
He made his way across
the Mojave Desert of California by compass where for miles all trace of the
trail was obliterated by drifting sand. Further on the wagon outfit was
abandoned for a tramp of a hundred miles to see the natural wonders of the
Tonto basin in central Arizona.
The Santa Fe Railroad
sent him on a special mission to the Grand Canyon to secure a series of
photographs of this most sublime scenery in the world, and one of his sunset
pictures secured at that time is considered by a well-known artist who resides
there as the finest ever made of the Grand Canyon. Some of these views were
selected by John Burroughs in a competition to illustrate his article on the
Grand Canyon in The Century Magazine, January, 1911.
Mr. Clatworthy has also
made some pictures in the Yosemite and along the California coast. His work has
been frequently reproduced in such magazines as World's Work, Country Life,
The Outlook and Century, and he has been asked to furnish enlarged
transparencies and photographs for the Government exhibits at the
He believes that there
are a dozen different localities in North America where the opportunity for
artistic pictures of natural scenery are equal to and some possibly surpass
anything the Old World can offer. In fact, he feels that few real artists have
yet attempted to reproduce our matchless natural scenery. Even such places as
the Yosemite and the Grand Canyon have only been attempted and few really great
pictures have been made of them. He believes that by far the best are yet to
come.