Look again at Whistler's portrait of his mother. Consider it now, not as a portrait, but as a single figure. What are the qualities of it which would be helped if there were more in it? The very simplicity of it makes the handling of it more masterly.
Look also at the one simple figure of Millet's "Sower;" all the great qualities of painting that are likely to get themselves onto one canvas you will find in this.
See what movement and dignity there are in it. How statuesque it is! It is monumental. It has scale; it imposes its own standard of measurement. There are air and envelopment and light and breadth. Are these not qualities enough for one canvas?
Nature the Suggester.—Take your suggestions, your ideas, for pictures from nature. Keep your eyes open. Observe all poses which may hint of possible schemes of light and shade, of composition, or of color. It is marvellous how constantly groupings and poses and effects of all kinds occur in every-day life. Humanity is kaleidoscopic in its succession of changes; one after another giving a phase new and different, but equally suggestive of a picture if you will take the hint. The picture which originates in a natural occurrence is always true if it is sincerely and frankly painted. Truth is more various than fiction. It is easier to see than to invent. And in the arrangement of the material which nature freely and constantly furnishes to him there is scope for all the invention of man.
Action and Character.—The picture comes from the action—resides in it. The action comes from the act, and is natural to it, expressive of it. Any gesture or position which is the natural and unaffected result of an essential action will be true and vital, suggestive of nature, and beautiful because it will inevitably have character—be characteristic. The beauty of the picture is not something external to the costumes, occupations, and life which surround you, but is to be found, contained in it, and brought out, manifested, made visible, by the mere logical working out of the need, the custom, or the occasion.
Emphasis is only the salience of the most natural movement.
Daily life swarms with pictures. You do not need to go to other places and other times for subjects. If you are awake to what is going on around you, if you see the essential line of the occupation, or the mass and color which is incidental to every least activity, you will have more suggested to you than you have time to do justice to. And it is your business to see the beautiful in the commonplace. Everything is commonplace till you see the charm in it. The artistic possibility does not lie in the unusual in any subject, but in the fact that the thing cannot get done without action and grouping and color and contrast; and these are the artist's opportunities. Keep your eyes open for them; learn to recognize them when you see them; look for these rather than for the details of the accidental fact which brings them out. See the movement of it, and the relation of it to what surrounds it, and you will hardly avoid seeing the picture in it.
Here is a composition which is an almost literal rendering of the movement and light and shade effect of a position quite accidentally seen.
The whole effect of lighting and of line, the grouping and the pose, resulted purely from the musician's desire to get a good light on his music. There was no need to add to it. It was simply necessary to recognize the charm of it, and to represent that charm through it as frankly as it could be done.