CHAPTER XX: COMPOSITION
Importance. - Composition is of the utmost importance. It is
impossible that a picture should be good without it. You may define it as
that study by means to which the balance of the picture comes out. But
you must understand the word balance in its broadest sense. There is
nothing in the planning of the picture which has nothing to be
considering in making the picture balance.
The arrangement of the lines, of the forms, of the masses, and of the colors must all be
right if the composition be right. Composition is the planning of the picture; and it is
more or less complicated, more or less to be carefully studied beforehand in exact
accordance with the simplicity or complication of the scheme of the picture. You may not
need more than the consideration of a few main facts. It may almost be done by a few
moments’ deliberation in some simple studies or even pictures. But even then there is
more subtle discrimination of selection, and a perfect gem of composition may be found
in the arrangement of a picture having the simplest and fewest elements. The more
complicated the materials which are to be worked into the picture, the more careful
must be the previous planning; but, for all that, the genius will find scope for his utmost
powers in a simple figure, just because the fewer the means, the more each single thing
can interfere with the balance of the whole, and the more a fine choice will tell.
The Æsthetic. - I have already mentioned briefly the aesthetic elements of the
picture. I have called your attention that back of the obvious facts of a subject and the
objects in the picture, and the theme which the painter makes his picture represent; back
of the technical processes and management of concrete materials which make painting
possible, is the aesthetic purpose of the work of art; without this it could not be work of
art at all; it would be merely a more or less exact representation of something, a mere
prosaic description, the interest in which would lie wholly in the fact, and would perish
whenever interest in the fact should cease. It is not the fact, nor even the able expression
of the fact, which makes a work of art a thing of interest and delight centuries after the
bearing of the fact has been forgotten.
The perennial interest of a work of art lies in the way in which the artist has used his
ostensible theme, and all the facts and objects appertaining to it, as a part of the material
with which he expresses those ideas which are purely æsthetic; which do not rest on
material things. These have to do with material things only by rendering them beautiful,
giving to them an interest which they themselves cannot otherwise have.
Theory. - Does this sound unpractical? Well, it is unpractical. Does it seem mere
theory? It is theory. I want to impress it on you that it is theory. For it is the theory
which underlies art, and if you do not understand it, you only understand art from the
outside. Consciously or unconsciously every artist works to express these purely æsthetic
qualities, and to a greater or less extent he expresses himself through them.