loo LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



opp. p. 48), or it may be the expression of the unhindered power of 

 nature, as the typical growth of a tree. (See Plate 9.) The shape 

 may have interest not for itself but from something which it symbolizes 

 or represents, for instance, a letter or a symbol like a crown in topiary 

 work, or a statue, in which part of the interest at least is aroused by 

 the action or the person or animal represented. 



Diiferent shapes will have different emotional effects upon the ob- 

 server as they suggest different postures of his own body with their 

 accompanying emotions. A crouching or a cramped shape, for instance, 

 will produce quite a different effect in the observer's mind from that 

 produced by an aspiring or expanding shape, and any one sensitive to 

 matters of this kind will be found, when he describes shapes, express- 

 ing their emotional effect upon him by making gestures or assuming 

 attitudes similar to the shapes which he is describing.* (Compare 

 the difference in attitude between the pine in Plate 12 and the cypresses 

 in Drawing XIII, opposite.) 

 Value of In landscape compositions, the shape relation of the various objects 



Shapes and their ^jj| largely influence the excellence of the composition entirely apart 

 in Composition from any considerations of what the objects themselves may be. The 

 repetition of a pyramidal shape, for instance, here in a spruce tree, 

 there in the gable of a house, and again in a distant mountain, may 

 give a compositional unity to a landscape. (Compare the repetition of 

 rounded shapes in Drawing XXV, opp. p. 196.) A sequence of shapes, 

 perhaps first a stretch of river and then a narrow strip of meadow, 

 and then a piece of road seen in sharp perspective, may carry the eye 

 in a certain direction to the dominant object in the composition, or 

 perhaps offset and balance a contrary sequential effect elsewhere in 

 the field of view. A landscape composition may be balanced by the 

 equality of interest attracted, for instance, by the definite and sharply 

 outlined shape of a rock on one side of the picture and perhaps a less 

 definite though larger form made by a mass of shrubbery on the other 

 side of the composition. Of course it is rare that our attention is held 

 by an object purely on account of its shape, though it often is attracted 

 for this reason. Objects once perceived are likely to hold the attention 

 rather for some associational interest; but the shape of objects in a 



* Cf. Chapter II, p. 14. 



