Wong Nei Cheong Village

Tue, 04/05/2016 - 12:03

The China Magazine, Volume 2, Issues 14-19

https://books.google.com/books?id=N4VFAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA55&dq=%22the%20gap…

There is the picture. I call it ‘Wong-nei-chung Village. See if you can discover its principal subject! Is it the village? Examine it and see if everything else is subordinate to the village. Scarcely so, I think; the trees on the right hand of the foreground contrast richly in their depth of colour and distinctness with the softer outlines of the distant houses, and help you to see how far they are from where you stand, but the remainder of the foreground bears little or no relation to them. The village then is subordinate to something else. Is that something else the hill in the back ground ! Look carefully, again and again, and by degrees you will come to see that everything in the picture, from first to last, unites to convey to you an idea of the grandeur and the grace of that great hill.

Its outline is echoed in that of the trees in the right foreground. There is the same sudden rise at the summit, and the same slope below, which, in the trees, breaks off soon and droops to the earth, while in the hill it flows grandly away into the far distance. These trees are themselves echoed by the bush on the other side, the outline of the main portion of which, begins a graceful curve which is continued by the hedge on the opposite side of the road, and over the nearer pines, and goes out of the picture in the patch of grass by the roadside. Then there is the village; look how it nestles ! The trees in front hold themselves just high enough to let you peep at it but no more, and you see it surrounded by clouds of other trees that clothe the hill. Do you note how all this gives to the hill the air of a protector? and see how nobly it bears its character! Rising above all, nobler than all, greater than all, calmer than all, it looks royally down upon the landscape of which it is the King, and in token of its kingship wears a crown of golden light upon its forehead, placed there by the morning sun.

This is what your camera can do for you. Why not let it do so oftener?

Date picture taken
1868