In the examples I have given you there has always been some good reason for placing the figures on one side of the picture, but where no good reason exists, it ought not to be done.
It may not be out of place here to say something about the size of the figures in proportion to the canvas. This is a very important element in the composition of a picture, and many a good and careful work has been spoiled by the figures being either too large or too small for the canvas.
In these days, when the general destination of pictures is to decorate dining-rooms or to fill small galleries, space ought to be economized. We should avoid, as a rule, large areas of background; but, on the other hand, when the figures are too large for the canvas the effect is very unpleasant. An erect figure with the head bent down should have space enough above it to allow of the head being raised, otherwise the figure has an uncomfortable look, as if she could not lift up her head without rapping it against the frame.
Indeed all stooping, sitting, or kneeling figures should have space enough allowed them to stand up in. They should not, in short, look as if they had been put into those attitudes in order to pack them into the picture.
The mannerism of introducing figures too large for the canvas originated probably with the old German masters of the Albert Durer school. With them, however, it was not a mannerism but a habit contracted by wood-engraving.
In those early days the graving tools were very rude and coarse; moreover, the blocks were small, hence it became imperative to design the figures as large as possible; and the habit thus acquired spread to drawings and pictures.
When, on the other hand, the figures are too small, the picture generally looks stagey, as if the artist had taken his composition from some genteel comedy-scene at a theatre. Cases frequently occur where it is desirable to keep the figures small, as in a caravan march across the desert, or in a procession moving down a cathedral nave.
In the one case it is desirable to give an idea of the boundless waste of sand, and in the other the architecture of the cathedral is probably more interesting than the individual action of the priests composing the procession, and therefore the figures should be very small for the canvas.
As to the actual dimensions of the figures in historical or “genre” subjects, there is only one size which I think objectionable, and that is rather smaller than life. Figures of four and a half or five feet high seldom look well. Half life-size, or rather more, is a very good proportion, and any size below this, down to the microscopic figures of Breughel or Meissonnier, is equally good.