LANDSCAPE COMPOSITION^ 91 



by the experience that one may perceive several distinct and different 

 unities at different times in exactly the same view. For example, a 

 man may come into a room at the end of which is a mullioned window. 

 He first sees merely a pattern of panels of light in a lattice of dark. 

 Soon he notices, through the window, certain converging lines of paths, 

 balanced masses of flower color, and dark overarching trees, and he 

 enjoys the picture so produced within the frame of the window. His 

 attention then goes still farther, and from this picture and its elements 

 he infers a formal garden, which his imagination constructs in all its 

 dimensions. Plate 15 is another illustration of the possibility of alter- 

 native unities from the same view. In this picture, according as the 

 attention falls, one sees either a pattern of tree trunks and branches 

 with a background of landscape, or a view of a winding road seen 

 through a foreground of trees. 



The associative processes of the mind will make it group certain Attention and 

 things together and automatically exclude certain incongruous things, ''^^^^^S 

 so that these incongruous things are often not remembered and some- 

 times not even noticed. The things most likely to be observed in this 

 way are therefore those w^hich are most akin to the memories of the 

 particular observer.* For instance, the horticulturist sees a plant, the 

 geologist an outcrop, the painter a composition. Training in a cer- 

 tain kind of perception will make that perception more automatic and 

 therefore unconscious, and will make the objects so perceived more 

 interesting, hence the attention of each man is apt to rest first and 

 longest on objects which he is "trained to see," necessarily to the 

 partial exclusion of other objects, which might be got by synthesis of 

 the same visual material along other lines. On the other hand, an 

 unfamiliar object among familiar ones may strike the attention by 

 force of contrast, and hold it by force of novelty. 



The relative force with which the different objects in a composition Emphasis, 

 will strike the attention, the relative interest, and duration of interest. Contrast, 

 which the observer will feel in them, is something of the first importance Dominance 

 in any design. Any emphasizing of an object is merely arranging that 

 the attention shall be attracted to it. All the effects of contrast, of 

 novelty, of surprise, are due to the fact that the mind grasps with 



* Cf. Chapter II, p. 12. 



