20 



HORSES AND MOVEMENT 



There is a picture by a well-known artist which illus- 

 trates the point exactly. The subject is a group of figures 

 dragging a heavy load. Their attitudes, however, com- 

 bine into a pattern of which the rhythmic flow is back- 

 wards in opposition to the intended forward motion. 

 As a result there is created in the mind of anyone who is 

 sensitive to rhythmic design, a strong impression that they 

 are moving backwards, despite their attitudes. One can 

 reason that they should be advancing, one feels the 

 contrary. Such a contradiction makes nonsense and is 



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untrue to what we see, for in nature, where things actually 

 move, it could not possibly occur. 



Whistler on a certain occasion, after studying deeply 

 the border of a Japanese mat, exclaimed that its design 

 had revealed to him how to express motion by pattern. 

 Although, when a movement is so regular as to be ex- 

 pressed diagrammatically as a straight line or a circle, 

 there is nothing in such lines to suggest that there is 

 flow in either direction, yet patterns can be so designed 

 that the spectator's eye is irresistibly led across them in 

 the intended direction and at the intended 

 speed. When inventing such patterns the artist 

 resembles the author, who so constructs his 

 passages that he compels the reader to read them 

 fast or slowly, smoothly or abruptly, according 

 to the particular feeling he wishes to arouse. 

 Good illustrations of this principle are to be 

 met with everywhere, for instance in the orna- 

 mental borders of books, or ancient Chinese 

 bas-reliefs, where figures, plants and patterns 

 flow into each other, leading the eye along the 

 mere patterns with the same sense of motion 

 that it feels in looking at the running figures. 

 Or test the effect of pattern by taking some 

 turbulent picture by Rubens or Goya, or a 



