92 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Landscape 



Composition 

 within the 

 Visual Angle 



Unity of 

 Larger 

 Landscape 

 Compositions 



particular concentration of attention anything different from that 

 which it has just considered, and the closer the juxtaposition of the 

 two dissimilar perceptions, in time or in space, the more powerful the 

 appeal to the attention. Effects of climax depend on a sequential 

 demand on the attention, culminating by directing the attention to 

 the object of most interest. An object may to some extent be made 

 dominant in a composition by a sequence of attention leading to it, 

 but unless it is itself capable of holding the attention for a sufficient 

 time, through its own interest, it will seem to be occupying a place 

 too important for its worth. 



There is a physical consideration which tends to limit the field 

 within which the attention can be attracted by objects in a pictorial 

 composition, namely, the fact that the human eye is so constituted 

 that only such objects can be clearly seen at the same time as lie within 

 the so-called angle of vision, which is normally about twenty degrees. 

 The pictorial compositional relation of objects can be well perceived 

 only when they lie so close together that the attention is attracted to 

 each of them according to its value in the composition without being 

 distracted by the necessity of turning the eye or turning the head to 

 bring different parts of the composition into the field of vision. This 

 consideration is as true of a landscape composition as it is of a painting. 

 A man may stand before a landscape and without moving his body see 

 half around the horizon, but it is only if the landscape unity be com- 

 posed within the visual angle that he can well appreciate it as a pic- 

 torial composition.* 



A landscape composition, however, may give pleasure even though 

 it covers a wider angle of view than can be included in a pictorial unity. 

 It may have a three-dimensional unity, an organization in plan and 

 elevation, which can be reconstructed In the mind from the memories 

 of a number of different views, which views indeed may not be all 

 taken from the same station point. It is quite possible that an 

 observer might remember a garden as well composed and beautiful 

 even although it were impossible to take, in that garden, a single 



* Cf. the discussion of the visual angle, p. 779-781, in N. S. Shaler's article, 

 already referred to, The Landscape as a Means of Culture, in the Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 

 1898. 



