Design in reaction against the formalized grounds of the Chateau and the Grand Trianon expressed still more definitely an attempt to seek relief from the etiquette and repression of court life. Here, in peasant dress, Marie Antoinette forgot, or played she forgot, that she was queen of France. The theatrical farm buildings suggested as far as might be a totally different life; their irregular forms, ivy-covered walls and thatched roofs, their informal setting of tree and pond, were intentionally created to produce through their rustic style, their naturalistic character, an effect as different as possible from the formal setting of the rest of the life of the court. (See Drawing XII, opp. p. 84.) In planning his work, particularly in its larger outlines, the landscape architect has need to remind himself that it is these effects, and not physical characteristics as such, which are ultimate units in his design. An appreciation of this fact will sometimes enable him to escape from a difficulty which otherwise might seem insurmountable. It usually happens that a client expresses his desires in concrete terms, often in very uncompromising terms indeed; he tells the landscape architect that he wishes certain definite objects in certain definite arrangements. The landscape architect may know that such arrangements of objects would be inevitably ugly. He should have the power to look back of the definite objects proposed by the client and to appreciate the large fundamental effect for which they stand in the client's mind. This effect may well be worthy, and the designer may hope to work out some other arrangement of objects which will produce the same desired effect, and so satisfy the client, - an arrangement which shall be desirable also in other respects, and not open to the objections which the designer finds in the client's original suggestion. A client may, for instance, say that he desires to build, on the exposed summit of a rocky and pine-clad New England hill, a replica of a certain long, low, flat-roofed, stucco Italian villa. The designer may know that such a structure would be ugly in the given setting, and he may find that what really appeals to the client in that particular villa is not its form, but perhaps a certain effect of refined magnificence of living. The designer may then be able to persuade the client that this effect which he desires may be more cheaply, more beautifully, more appropriately expressed by a structure built of the local stone, suggesting perhaps an English country house of refinement and importance, conveniently related in an informal way to the topography, and harmoniously crowning with its irregular mass the rugged summit of the hill. Composition in Landscape and in Painting CHAPTER VII LANDSCAPE COMPOSITION COMPOSITION IN LANDSCAPE AND IN PAINTING ORDER IN COMPOSITION, OBJECTIVE UNITY AND ATTENTION AND SUBJECTIVE SEGREGATION OF THE COMPOSITION and variety-SEQUENCE-Sequence of continuation or repetition - RhythmProgression BALANCE Symmetrical Occult- Intensification of emotion from repetition, sequence, and balance CHARACTERISTICS OF OBJECTS IN LANDSCAPE COMPOSITION SHAPE - Individuality through shape in landscape composition - Value of shapes and their arrangement in composition SIZE, SCALE, AND DISTANCE Absolute and relative scale - Indication of scale in landscape composition - Effects of perspective - TEXTURE - Scale relation of texture to size and shape-COLOR- Color and light — Hue, intensity, and value in color composition - Emotional effect of colors - Color harmony - Color in landscape composition - LIGHT AND SHADE- Light and shade unity in landscape composition - Variability of light and shade - ATMOSPHERE AND ATMOSPHERIC PERSPECTIVE As a consideration in landscape composition — ILLUOf material — Of shape - Of size — Of character Associational illusions-LANDSCAPE COMPOSITIONS - Typical kinds of pictorial compositions - The vista as a typical example - Pictorial enframement, foregrounds, backgrounds, and planes of distance — OBJECTS IN LANDSCAPE COMPOSITION ACCORDING TO THEIR DESIGN VALUE Temporary elements. SIONS IN COMPOSITION Landscape composition is to the landscape architect, as it is to the landscape painter, the arrangement of the elements of his design into an ordered whole. The painter, however, is making a composition in pigments on a flat canvas which represents his subject as seen from one point of view only; and he is therefore chiefly concerned with the two-dimensional relations of his elements, in the plane of his canvas, as seen from that point of view. The three-dimensional relations of things which he represents he can only suggest by the way he handles the color, the drawing in perspective, the atmosphere, in his picture. The landscape architect is making a composition in solid objects in the outdoor world which will be seen from many points of view, and so the three-dimensional relations of his elements will be to him the more important consideration. It is true, however, that any one view of the landscape architect's work will produce on the spectator's mind an effect closely comparable to that produced by a painting, and therefore the landscape architect must not neglect this two-dimensional or pictorial relation in his work. It is indeed only through obtaining a series of these two-dimensional views that an observer can perceive or value the three-dimensional composition.* Qur pleasure in the composition of a landscape depends on our ap- Order in preciation of the ordered relations which exist among its parts. This Composition, order must inevitably consist objectively of some similarity of physical Subjective Objective and characteristics among the parts, or of some discernibly harmonious space relation among them; that is, the separate objects in the composition must be either harmonious in color or shape or texture or else harmoniously related one to another by repetition or sequence or balance. Stated subjectively, the pleasure is based on the pleasant relations of the interests which are aroused by the various characteristics. The repetition, sequence, or balance which produces order in a composition is in this sense therefore repetition, sequence, or balance of interest, and not merely of objects or of characteristics. This can easily be proved by observing a picture which contains upon one side * "The great object of our present inquiry seems to be, what is that mode of study which will best enable a man of a liberal and intelligent mind, to judge of the forms, colours, effects, and combinations of visible objects: to judge of them either as single compositions, which may be considered by themselves without reference to what surrounds them; or else as parts of scenery, the arrangement of which must be more or less regulated and restrained by what joins them, and the connection of which with the general scenery must be constantly attended to. Such knowledge and judgment comprehend the whole science of improvement with regard to its effect on the eye; and I believe can never be perfectly acquired, unless to the study of natural scenery, and of the various styles of gardening at different periods, the improver adds the theory at least of that art, the very essence of which is connection: a principle of all others the most adapted to correct the chief defects of improvers." Sir Uvedale Price, Essays on the Picturesque, 1810, v. 1, p. 12. (See REFERENCES.) Segregation of the Composition Unity and of the center a large tree-mass and on the other a small figure of a man; the small human figure may be perfectly balanced in interest against the much larger tree because of the greater number of associations which are aroused in the human mind by a human figure than by a tree. Such a single balance of interest in the picture may not make the picture balanced as a whole, however. The total interest of the area on one side of the center — in color, in shape, in contrast, in all that attracts and holds attention - must balance the total interest of the other side. - In composing a landscape, the designer's first act is the direction of the attention to it as a unity, thereby segregating it in the observer's mind from the outside world./ In this respect the landscape architect is less fortunate than the painter and the sculptor. The painter gets segregation for his picture by its frame; the sculptor has his statue isolated on its own pedestal. The landscape architect, however, is dealing with an area of land which is actually continuous with the rest of the earth's surface, yet he too must set the limits of his composition as the first necessary act of producing it, and then he must correlate the subordinate parts of this unity. This segregation may at times be obtained like the sculptor's by somewhat isolating the object, as for instance, in the case of a free-standing summer house, a grove, a hill, an island; but almost always it is obtained either by actual inclosure or by pictorial enframement./ For instance, actual inclosure may be given by a fence, a border plantation, or woods about an open glade; while the arrangement of a view through a cut vista-opening or between foreground trees may give pictorial enframement. The first is effective from any point of view, the second only from a chosen point. In both cases we can see that the fundamental effect produced is concentration of the observer's attention upon the unity designed. Where mere physical segregation or enframement may be impossible or undesirable, sufficient unity may sometimes be obtained merely by concentration of attention by striking characteristics or by unity of parts, for instance by a brilliant mass of flowers in a shrub border, or by a unified pattern in a parterre bed. The fact that the effective unity perceived in any scene is merely the unity on which attention is at the moment concentrated is shown |