My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

LONDON, AND VOYAGE TO THE EAST 167of physiognomy was to be preserved. I went severaltimes during the work on the groups of SouthAmerican origin, but though when completed, withthe real ornaments, clothing, weapons, and domesticimplements, the groups were fairly characteristic andlife-like, yet there remained occasionally details ofattitude or expression which suggested classicGreeceor Italy rather than the South American savage.These ethnological figures, although instructiveto the student, were never very popular, and soonbecame the subject of contempt and ridicule. Onereason of this was their arrangement in the open,quite close to the passing visitor, with nothing toisolate them from altogether incongruous surroundings.Another was, that they were not carefully attendedto, and when I saw them after my return from theEast, they had a shabby and dilapidated appearance,and the figures themselves were more or less dusty,which had a most ludicrous effect in what were intendedto represent living men and women, being soutterly unlike the clear, glossy, living skins of allsavage peoples. To be successful and life-like, suchgroups should be each completely isolated in a deeprecess, with three sides representing houses or huts,or the forest, or river-bank, while the open frontshould be enclosed by a single sheet of plate-glass,and the group should be seen at a distance of atleast ten or fifteen feet. In this way, with a carefullyarranged illumination from above and an artisticcolouring of the figures and accessories, each groupmight be made to appear as life-like as some of thebest figures at Madame Tussaud's, or as the grandinteriors of cathedrals,which were then exhibited atthe Diorama. In the museum of the future, suchgroups will find their place in due succession to the