Fig. 16.
Lines which seem to separate us from the picture and cut off one part from another must be carefully avoided, and an endeavour to find something which will, as it were, lead the eye into the picture, should be diligently sought for, and indeed a subject, however it may interest us, must often be abandoned if it lacks those things which go to make pleasing composition, remembering as we should always do that in pictorial work the fact that objects are curious, or interesting, or pretty, has nothing to do with the case, but that they are only to be valued according as they act as media for expressing pleasing ideas, beautiful thoughts and sentiments, which they will not do if some part creates a feeling of unpleasing arrangement or design. If a scene does not compose well, we should as pictorial workers feel no desire to reproduce it. But you may say "Cannot we often by changing our point of view get an otherwise ill-composed subject to compose well?" Most decidedly, that is precisely what we should do, but it is no longer the same subject or view.
And now let me say that it is often surprising how much alteration may be made by changing our position. Figs. 15 and 16 are together an instance of this, the outline here given being made from a pencil sketch made on the spot, whilst figs. 17 and 18 are examples of the desirable change brought about by watching and waiting for a change in the position of light and the condition of the river's tide.
Fig. 17.Fig. 18.
Where the beginner most often fails is in taking things as they are without pausing to consider whether they might not be improved, and if so in what way, and then patiently searching to see if such better way can be found.
Pictorial success will as often as not depend on the exercise of fastidious taste, which is satisfied with nothing but the very best, and not quite content even then.