Page 17 - Bulletin 7 2003

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Collection, for all its flaws, is certainly one of the most remarkable collections in the
world.

Arthur Elliott as a photographer

In the preface I spoke of Arthur Elliott, somewhat unkindly, as ‘perhaps not even a
particularly good photographer’. What is the artistic merit of his work? Let me say at

once that the technical quality of his documentary photographs is adequate; he
generally took great pains to achieve good lighting, composition and definition,

although perhaps not more so than most of his contemporaries working with glass
plates. His creative ability was limited to a small field. He did hardly any portraits,

while his Malay studies were little more than mere records. The less said about his

figure studies the better, although the best one among these, the famous ‘sand-pipers’
– which now appears rather contrived – achieved a measure of success. Elliott once

or twice experimented with still-lifes, but never followed this up.

Elliott’s greatest talents evidently lay in the recording of picturesque scenes, in the

rendering of the dreamy atmosphere of the farms and villages of the old Cape, in the
capturing of that quality of fitness-to-purpose and of unity of scale, material and

detail which gives the Cape Dutch style a place among the world’s great styles of
domestic architecture. Here his work rose from the mediocre to the superb; few

photographers of old Cape architecture ever took one shot that can stand comparison

with many dozens of Elliott photographs.

It is difficult to define the essential quality that makes these ‘Elliott classics’ so
memorable. The way in which he used the sunlight has much to do with it, although

many other photographers have used the effect of rays of sunlight striking the
irregularities of white, plastered walls in a similar way. Entirely Elliott’s own is the

way in which he introduced the human element into his photographs, even if his

‘models’ were often not the actual inhabitants but children who accompanied him on
his trips. Elliott had great skill in arranging his figures so as to enhance the strict

composition and yet appear entirely natural, if at times somewhat static for our liking