In this the Twentieth Century the aesthetic taste of monarchs is no longer approved unquestioningly by all the world. The power of a King’s mistress is at present more social than aesthetic. To‐day the photographer is more potent in the creation of a woman’s reputation for beauty than the most autocratic emperor. Photography is no longer merely the business of exact reproduction—it is an Art, penetrating in its psychological illustration of character. As one gazes at those depressing likenesses of lovely women who lived sixty years ago, one realizes at once the popularity of such painters as Winterhalter. He, at any rate, made his “sitters” look like half‐sisters to the Empress Eugenie, in a pose designed expressly for the decoration of a chocolate box. To‐day the photographer has usurped the position of all but the greatest portrait‐painters. And this, for the reason that the best modern photographers must also of necessity be artists. They must undergo something of the same rigorous training as painters. It is no longer a question of a good camera, a studio, and the exhibition case of “samples” hung outside the front door. A modern photographer must understand all the nuances of light and shade, tone value, colour, pose, proportion. His studies must have the characteristics of first‐class paintings—minus, of course, their colour. Nevertheless, this omission must be suggested through the variations of light and shade. It is because Mr. Hoppé is also a painter that the reproductions in this book are so superb in all those details which go to make up perfection in portraiture. They are not merely photographs (as we in our ignorance often designate photography as “mere”). They represent an art nearly akin to the finest portrait painting. Note, for example, the exquisite manner in which light and shade has been employed to throw into relief just those most lovely features which each face possesses individually, even the most beautiful. Note especially in this regard how cleverly the artist has caught the different characteristics which belong to each individual nationality—the Red Indian type of beauty, for example, as contrasted with that of the English. The difference is not so marked in the contour of the face, nor in the features, but in the _eyes_. There you have a whole volume of comparisons. Those of the Red Indian Beauty, exquisite in their shape, seem nevertheless to have, as it were, a shutter closed down behind them. They are unfathomable. The typical English eyes, on the other hand, how clear they are, how open; how we seem able to see right into them—deep down into the labyrinth of thought! Examine the Spanish portrait, and note how cleverly the artist has thrown into relief those most lovely characteristics of Spanish beauty—the formation of the chin, the eyebrows, the fascinating manner in which the hair is arranged as a framework for the modelling of the whole face. The Gipsy beauty—how admirably it shows