Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures

by Henry Rankin Poore

CIRCULAR COMPOSITION

Circular observation in pictures whose structure was apparently not circular leads to the consideration of circular composition, or that class of pictures where the evident intention is to compose under the influence of circular observation—where the circle expresses the first thought in the composition.

This introduces us to the widest reaches of pictorial art, for in this category lie the greatest [pg 95] of the world's pictures. Slight analysis is necessary to discover this arrangement in the majority of the strongest compositions which we encounter. In the Metropolitan and Lenox Galleries of New York, the following pictures may be looked at for this form of structure, showing the circle either in the vertical plane or in perspective. Auguste Bonheur's large cattle-piece, Inness' “Autumn Oaks,” Corot's “Ville d'Avray,” Knaus' “Madonna,” Cabanel's kneeling female figure, Koybet's “Card Players,” “Jean d'Arc,” by Bastian Lepage; “The Baloon,” by Julian Dupré; Wylie's “Death of the Vendean Chief,” Leutze's “Crossing of the Delaware,” Meissonier's “1807,” the three pictures of Turner, “Milton Dictating to His Daughters,” by Munkacsy, and Knaus' “Bow at a Peasants' Ball.” This list contains the most important works of these collections, and others might easily be added.

The head by Van Dyck carries with it the repose which belongs to the completeness of the circle.

Like Saturn and his ring, this sphere within the circle is typical of harmony in unity, and for this reason, though detached as we know it to be, it has a greater completeness than though joined to a body. It is on this general principle that all circular compositions are based—absorption of the attention within the circuit.

In Tintoretto's “Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne,” the floating figure offers us a shock not quite relieved when we recall the epoch of its production or concede the customary license [pg 96] to mythology. At a period in art when angels were employed through a composition as a stage manager would scatter supernumeraries—to fill gaps or create masses—in any posture which the conditions of the picture demanded, it is not strange that the artist conceived this figure suspended from above in an arc of a circle, if in these lines it served his purpose. In this shape it completes a circuit in the figures, fills the space which would otherwise open a wide escape for the vision, and, by the union of the three heads, joins the figures in the centre of the canvas, completing, with the legs of Ariadne, five radial lines from this focus.

To the mind of a sixteenth century artist, these reasons were more convincing than the objection to painting a hundred and forty pounds of recumbent flesh and blood, with the support unseen. To the modern artist such a conception would be well-nigh impossible, though Mr. Watts gives us much the same action. Here, however, the movement of the draperies supplies motion to the figure of Selene, and as a momentary action we know it to be possible. Were the interpretation of motion by hair and drapery impossible, and the impression, as in the Tintoretto, that of the suspended nude model, it would be safe to say that no modern painter would have employed such a figure. This touch of realism, even among the transcendental painters, denotes the clean-cut separations between the modern and mediaeval art sense.

While these two examples show the “vortex” [pg 97] arrangement with fluent outlines, the [portrait][10] by Mr. Whistler expresses the same principles in an outline almost rectangular, but is to be placed in the same category as the other two. The chair-back, the curtain, the framed etching, are all formally placed with respect to the edges of the canvas, and as we observe them in their order, we return in a circuit to the head.

The circle in composition is discoverable in many pictures where there is no direct evidence that the intention was to compose thus, but wherein analysis on these lines proves that, led by unity, balance and repose (cardinal beacon-lights to the mind artistic), the painter naturally did it.