GETTING INTO THE PICTURE
One reason that many pictures are passed in exhibitions is that the
visitor lacks an invitation to enter. Others frankly greet one a long way
off, obliging the wanderer searching for compelling interest to
acknowledge their cordiality, aware of a gesture of welcome in something
which he may later pause to analyse and at length apprehend.
It may appear in the freedom of an empty foreground, which, like a stage
unadorned, merely supports the action upon it; or, if this foreground be
adorned then happily by items of slight interest leading to the subject;
or it may insist with such an emphatic demand for attention that the
common places of receding perspective have been employed.
One spot or circumference there should be toward which through the
suppression of other parts the eye is led at once. When there, even
though the vision has passed far into the canvas, one is at the focal
point only, the true goal of the pictorial intention. Any element which
proves too attractive along this avenue of entrance is confusing to the
sight and weakening to the impression.
One item after another, in sequence, the visitor should then be led to,
and, having made the circuit and paid his respects to the company in the
order of importance with that special care which prevails at a Chinese
court function, the visitor should be shown the exit. Getting out of a
picture is almost as important as getting into it, but of this later.
If the artist, in the composition of his picture, cannot so arrange a
reception for his guests, he is not a successful host.
This disposal of the subject matter into which _principality_ enters so
acutely is more patent in the elaborate figure subject than in any other,
with the distinction between an assemblage of, and a crowd of figures,
made plain.
The writer once called, in company with a friend of the painter, upon the
late Edmond Yon, the French landscapist. We found him in his atelier, and
saw his completed picture, about to be sent to the Salon. He shortly took
us into an adjacent room, where hung his studies, and thence through his
house into the garden, showed us his view of the city, commented on the
few fruit trees, the flowers, as we made the circuit of the little plot,
and, at the porte, we found the servant with our hats. It was a perfectly
logically sequence. We had come to the end; and how complete!
“He always does it so,” said the friend. We had seen the man, his
picture, his studies, his house, caught the inspiration of his view, had
made the circuit of the things which daily surrounded him, and what
more—nothing; except the hats. Bon jour!
The new picture, like any new acquaintance, we are tempted to sound at
once, in a single glance, judging of the great and apparent planes of
character, seeking the essential affinity. If we pass favorably, our
enjoyment begins leisurely. The picture we are to live with must possess
qualities that will bear close scrutiny, even to analysis. If we are won,
there is a satisfaction in knowing why.
It must be remembered that the actual picture space in nature is that of a
_funnel,_ its size varying according to the extent of distance
represented. The angle of sixty degrees which the eye commands may widen
into miles. The matter of equipoise or unity therefore applies to most
extended areas and no part of this extent may escape from the calculation.
The objection of formal balance over the centre is that it produces a
straddle, as, in hopscotch one lands with both feet on either side of a
dividing line. In all pictures of deep perspective the best mode of
entrance is to triangulate in, with a series of zigzags, made easy through
the _habit of the eye to follow lines,_ especially long and receding ones.
It is the long lines we seize upon in pinning the action of a figure, and
the long lines which stretch toward us are those which help most to get us
into a picture.
The law here is that of perspective recession, and, it being the easiest
of comprehension and the most effective in result, is used extensively by
the scene-painter for his drop-curtain and by the landscapist, whose
subject proper lies often in the middle distance—toward which he would
make the eye travel.
When the opportunity of line is wanting an arrangement of receding spots,
or accents is an equivalent.
The same applies, though in less apparent force, to the portrait or
foreground figure subject.
Where the subject lies directly in the foreground, the eye will find it at
once, but the care of the artist should even then be exercised to avoid
lines which, though they could not block, might at least irritate one’s
direct vision of the subject.
Conceive if you can, for one could rarely find such an example in
pictorial art, of the forespace corrugated with lines paralleling the
bottom line of a frame. It would be as difficult for a bicyclist to
propel his machine across a plowed field as for one to drive his eye over
a foreground thus filled with distracting lines when the goal lay far
beyond.
Mr. Schilling, in his well-known “Spring Ploughing,” has treated this
problem with great discernment. Instead of a multiplicity of lines
crossing the foreplane, the barest suggestion suffices to designate plowed
ground, the absence of detail allowing greater force to the distant
groups.
In the Marine subject, especially with the sea running toward us, long
lines are created across the foreground, but with respect to these, as may
be noted in nature, there is a breaking and interlacing of lines in the
wave form so that the succession of such accents may lead tangentially
_from_ the direction of the wave. A succession of horizontal lines is
however the character of the marine subject. When the eye is stopped by
these it has found the subject. Only through the sky or by confronting
these forms at an angle can the force of the horizontals be broken.
Successful marines with the camera’s lens pointed squarely at the sea have
been produced, but the best of them make use of the modifying lines of the
surf, or oppositional lines or gradations in the sky.
In a large canvas by Alexander Harrison, its subject a group of bathers on
the shore, one single line, the farthest reach of the sea, proves an
artist’s estimate of the leading line. On it the complete union of figures
and ocean depended. Its presence there was simple nature, its strong
enforcement the touch of art.
The eye’s willingness to follow long lines may however become dangerous in
leading away from the subject and out of the picture. What student cannot
show studies (done in his earliest period) of an interesting fence or
stone wall, blocking up his foreground and leading the eye out of the
picture? It is possible to so cleverly treat a stone wall that it would
serve us as an elevation from which to get a good jump into the picture.
Here careful painting with the intent of putting the foreground out of
focus, could perhaps land the eye well over the obstruction, and if so,
our consideration of the picture begins beyond this point. If the
observer could take such a barrier as easily as a cross country
steeple-chaser his fences and stone walls, there would be no objection,
but when the artist forces his guest to climb!—he is unreasonable. For
two years a prominent American landscape painter had constantly on his
easel a very powerful composition. The foreplane of trees, with branches
which interlaced at the top, made, with the addition of a stone wall
below, an encasement for the picture proper, which lay beyond. The lower
line, i.e., the stone wall, was in constant process of change, obliterated
by shadow or despoiled by natural dilapidation, sometimes vine-grown. In
its several stages it showed always the most critical weighing of the
part, and a consummate dodging of the difficulties.
When finally exhibited, however, the wall had given way to a simple shadow
and a pool of water. The attempt to carry the eye over a cross-line in the
foreground had been a long and conclusive one, and its final abandonment
an admonition on this point. A barrier across the middle distance is
almost as objectionable. In the subject of a river embankment the eye
comes abruptly against its upper line, which is an accented one, and from
this dives off into the fathomless space of the sky, no intermediate
object giving a hint of anything existing between that and the horizon.
In order to use such a subject it would be necessary to oppose the
horizontal of the bank by an item that would overlap and extend above it,
as a hay wagon with a figure on top of it or the sail of a boat, and if
possible to continue this transitional feeling in the sky by such cloud
forms as would carry the eye up. Attraction in the sky would create a
depth for penetration which the embankment blocked.
[The Path of the Surf--Photo (Triangles Occuring in the leading line); The
Shepherdess--Millet (Composition Exhibiting a Double Exit)]
The _“__Path of the Surf__”_ is a splendid leading line ending most
beautifully in a curve.
Many readers will recall the notable picture by Mr. Picknell, now
deceased, of a white road in Picardie. Here all the lines converged at
the horizon. The perspective was so true as to become fascinating, a
problem of very ordinary deception. More subtle is Turner’s “Approach to
Venice,” see _Fundamental Forms,_ in which the lines are substituted by
spots—the gondolas—which, in like manner, bear us to the subject. The
graceful arch of the sky also presses us toward the subject.
One may readily use the placement of the spots and substitute cattle
instead of gondolas and woods for the spired city; or groups of figures,
sheep, rocks, etc. The composition is fundamental, and will accommodate
many subjects.
GETTING OUT OF THE PICTURE
This is important because necessary. It is much better to pass out than to
back out. Pictures show many awkward methods of exit. In some there are
too many chances to leave; in others there are none. Pictures in which
there is no opportunity for visual peripatetics require no such provision.
In the portrait we confront a personality, and some painters plainly tell
us by the blank space of the background that there shall be but one idea
to the observer’s mind. In this event he has but to bow and withdraw.
But suppose the curtain of the background be drawn and a glimpse is
disclosed of a landscape beyond. This bit of attraction leads us toward
it. Instead therefore of breaking off from the subject we are led away
from it. The associations with the subject are ofttimes interesting and
appropriate and the great majority of portraits include them. As soon
therefore as we begin on any detail in the background we connect the
portrait with the pictorial and the sitter becomes one of a number of
elements in the scheme, the fulcrum on which they balance. A patch of
sky, besides creating an expansion in the diameter of the picture
introduces color, often valuable, as noted later.
But more than this, these sky spots in a dark background are air holes.
They enable us to breathe in the picture, giving a decided sense of
atmosphere. When well subordinated they offer no distraction to the
subject, but give to the picture a depth. When no other object is
introduced, a gradation is serviceable. Much may be thus suggested and
besides the depth and air properties thus introduced, such variety of
surface excites visual motion. The eye always follows the course of light
from the shadow. The artist may make use of this fact in balancing the
picture and of leading the eye out where he will. As the elaborate
subject is often approached through a curve or zigzag, in like manner it
should be left, though the natural finish of such a series should connect
easily with its start.
The eye should _never_ be permitted to leave the principal figure or
object and go straight back and out through the centre. If this is
allowed the width of the picture is slighted. Therefore if the attraction
of the natural exit is greater than other objects they exist in vain.
The exit should be so guarded that after the visitor has moved about and
seen everything, he comes upon it naturally. For example conceive a
subject—figures or cattle—with the principal object in the foreground.
From this the other objects, all placed on the left side, move in a half
circle back and into the picture, this circuit naturally leading to an
opening in the trees or to a point of attraction in the sky or to a
glimpse of distance. If this be not of less interest than any object of
the progression, the unity of the picture disappears, for from the
principal object in the foreground the vision goes direct to the distance.
Providing two or more exits is a common error of bad composition. This is
the main objection to the form of balance on the centre, which produces
two spaces of equal importance on either side.
In the drawing of the _“__Shepherdess__”_ by Millet the attraction of two
alleys which the eye might take is largely regulated by the subordination
of one of them by proportional size and a lowering of the tone of the sky.
At best, however, it is a case of divided interest, though the deepest
dark against the highest light helps to control the situation. If for the
balance of the pines in the _snow scene_ a small tree on the right were
added, the objection would then be that from the central point of
attraction, the pines, the vision would go in two directions, toward the
houses and the tree. The visual lines connecting these two points would
cross the first or principal object instead of leading from this to one
and thence to the other as would not be the case if the added tree
appeared in the extreme _distance_ on the right. Under this arrangement
there would be progression into the picture. A still better arrangement
would have been direct movement from the mass of trees to the houses
placed on the right, with the space now occupied by them left vacant.