LANDSCAPE COMPOSITION 93 



photograph that would be pictorially well composed. Repton said of 

 Shardeloes : 



" This park must be acknowledged one of the most beautiful in England, 

 yet I doubt whether Claude himself could find, in its whole extent, a single 

 station from whence a picture could be formed. I mention this as a proof of 

 the little affinity between pictures and scenes in nature." * 



As the compositions are larger and less likely to be all visible from 

 one place, so does remembered effect come to play a larger and larger 

 part in producing the total eifect of the composition. So do con- 

 sistency of style, of character, and of emotional effect become more 

 and more important as unifying factors in the design. Pictorial unity 

 then becomes an excellence of individual parts. 



The success of the landscape designer in producing the most beautiful The Forms 

 landscape compositions possible under the chosen or enforced limlta- y, ^^"'^^. }^ 

 tlons of the problem will depend on his skill in combining the shapes 

 and textures and colors at his disposal in a pleasant and orderly fashion. 



The units may be such and so arranged that motion of attention 

 from unit to unit Is easiest In a certain direction. This effect Is se- 

 quence.^ 



The units may be such and so arranged that this tendency to 

 motion of the attention is equal in two opposite directions from a 

 vertical axis. This is balance. 



The units may be all the same In their Interest and consequent 

 ability to attract attention, or at least the same throughout In some 

 characteristic. This Is repetition, — of the units or of the characteristic, 

 as the case may be. 



These forms of order — repetition, sequence, and balance — may 

 be manifested in the two-dimensional pictorial scene, or they may be 

 perceived In the three-dimensional object, the two-dimensional aspect 

 of which need not manifest them directly. For Instance, a row of 

 columns Is In reality a repetition, but a picture of a row of columns or 

 a view of them In perspective Is a sequence. A formal garden seen 



* Repton, Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, 1805, in Chapter V, p. 65. 



t Repetition, sequence, and balance, the terms used to denominate three forms of 

 order by Dr. Denman W. Ross in his book On Drawing and Painting, Boston, Hough- 

 ton, Mifflin Company, 191 2. 



