Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures

by Henry Rankin Poore

CHAPTER VI - THE CIRCULAR OBSERVATION OF PICTURES

The entrance into a picture and obstacles thereto, as applied to landscape, has already been considered, from which it is evident that wisdom renders this as easy as possible for the vision, not only negatively, but through positive means as well. An obstruction through which penetration must be forced, diverting the attention, is like the person who claims us when we are trying to listen to someone else.

When in nature we observe a scene that naturally fits a frame and we find ourselves gazing first at one object and then at another and returning again to the first, we may be sure it will make a picture.

But when we are tempted to turn, in the inspection of the whole horizon (though this be circular observation), it proves we have not found a picture. Our picture, on canvas, must fit an arc of sixty degrees. The other thing is a panorama. The principle is contained in the illustration of the [athletes.] This picture has the fascination of a continuous performance and so in degree should every picture have.

In the foreground, or figure subject the same principles apply. The main point is to capture [pg 85] the observer's interest with the theme, which to his mental processes shall unfold according to the artist's plan. With twenty objects to present, which one on the chessboard of your picture shall take precedence and which shall stand next in importance, and which shall have a limited influence, and which, like the pawns, shall serve as little more than the added thoughts in the game?

In “The Slaying of the Unpropitious Messengers,” a picture of great power and truly sublime in the simplicity of its dramatic expression, the vision falls without hesitation on the figure of Pharaoh, easily passing over the three prostrate forms in the immediate foreground. These might have diverted the attention and weakened the subject had not they been skillfully played for second place. Their backs have been turned, their faces covered, and, though three to one, the single figure reigns supreme. Note how they are made to guide the eye toward him and into the picture and discover in the other lines of the picture an intention toward the same end, the staircase, the river, the mountain, the angular contour of the portico behind tying with the nearer roof projection and making a broken stairway from the left-hand upper corner. See, again, the lines of the canopy composing a special frame for the master figure.

Suppose a reconstruction of this composition. Behold the slain messengers shaken into less recumbent and more tragic attitudes, arranged along the foreplane of the picture; let all the [pg 88] leading lines be reversed; make them antagonistic to the principles upon which the picture was constructed. The subject indeed will have been preserved and the story illustrated, but the following points will be lost and nothing gained: A central dominating point of interest; the disparity between monarch and slave; the sentiment of repose and quietude suggested by a starlit night and the coordination of recumbent lines; the pathos of the lonely vigil, with the gaze of the single figure strained and fixed upon, the distant horizon whence he may expect the remnants of his shattered army.

The artist's first conception of this subject was doubtless that of a pyramid; the head of Pharaoh is the apex and the slaves the base and side lines. The other lines were arranged in part to draw away from this apparent and very common form of composition. One has but to look through a list of notable pictures to find evidence of the very frequent use of these concentric lines drawing the vision from the lower corners of the picture to an apex of the pyramid.