There are three types of group composition; first, where the subject's interest is centred upon an object or idea within the picture as in “The Cabaret” or Rembrandt's “Doctors” surrounding a dissecting table; second, where the attraction lies outside the picture as in the “Syndics” or the “Night Watch,” and third, where absolute repose is expressed and the sentiment of reverie has dominated the group, as in “The Madonna of the Chair,” and the ordinary family photograph.
The spiritual or sentimental quality of the theme should have first consideration and dictate the form of arrangement. A unity between the idea and its form of expression constitutes the desideratum of refinement in composition.
CHAPTER X - LIGHT AND SHADE
In this familiar term in art the importance of the two elements is suggested in their order.
The effort of the painter is ever in the direction of light. This is his thought. Shade is a necessity to the expression of it.
Chiaroscuro,—from the Italian, light obscure, in its derivation, gives a hint of the manufacture of a work of light and shade.
Light is gained by sacrifice. This is one of the first things a student grasps in the antique class. Given an empty outline he produces an effect of light by adding darks. So do we get light in the composition of simple elements, by sacrifice of some one or more, or a mass of them, to the demands of the lighter parts. “Learn to think in shadows,” says Ruskin. Rembrandt's art entire, is the best case in point. A low toned and much colored white may be made brilliant by dark opposition. The gain to the color scheme lies in its power to exhibit great light and at the same time suggest fullness of color.
As we have discussed line and mass composition as balanced over the central vertical line, so is the question of light and shade best comprehended, as forces balancing, over a broad [pg 152] middle tint. The medium tint is the most important, both for tone and color. This commands the distribution of measures in both directions; toward light and toward dark. Drawings in outline upon tinted paper take on a surprising finish with a few darks added for shadow and the high lights touched in with chalk or Chinese white. The method in opaque water color, employed by F. Hopkinson Smith and others, of working over a tinted paper such as the general tone of the subject suggests, has its warrant in the early art of the Venetian painters. If a blue day, a blue gray paper is used; if a mellow day, a yellow paper.
In pictorial art the science of light and dark is not reducible to working formulae as in decoration, where the measures of Notan are governed on the principle of interchange. Through decoration we may touch more closely the hidden principles of light and shade in pictures than without the aid of this science, and the artist of decorative knowledge will always prove able in “effect” in his pictorial work.