Jean Pillement
Landscape with Ruin

Jean Pillement's 1791 oil painting Landscape with Ruin was, for me, the most interesting of the three paintings I selected. I tend to favor classical European art because there's always an intricate, ethereal quality about paintings from that era regardless of the subject; however, this painting captures that essence even more so through the mystical scenery. The artist beautifully executed many visual techniques in the composition of his painting, the first of which is radiating lines. Some of these radiating lines are more subtle in comparison to the other two paintings I selected, but I have a greater appreciation for that approach because I believe the eye moves more fluidly over the painting and the viewer is granted a little more freedom in how they choose to follow the painting. The radiating lines in this painting present themselves in the rocky structures that move your eye up toward the right, the bowing tree that swoops down to the left through the trunk and roots, and the more subtle sun beams and resulting highlight of the ground on which the subjects, a group of travelers, rest. The painting also does a spectacular job of applying the rule of thirds. Traditionally I thought of the rule of thirds as a painting being sectioned off into either horizontal or vertical sections of three, but in this case they appear more like large pieces of pie, each capable of telling its own story. The upper left section of the "pie" is sectioned off by the swooping trees just above the travelers in the foreground and where the sky begins to turn dark. Within this section, the mist surrounding an ambiguous man-made structure creates a sense of mystery. The upper right third is sectioned off by the beginning of the darkening sky and the shadowy downward slope of the rocky structure above the travelers.The dilapidated castle is eerily beautiful and I spent a great deal of time imagining what it looked like in its prime. The final third, which also happens to be the Golden Triangle we can find in many classical paintings, is everything under the top of the sweeping trees down to the river rocks in the bottom left hand corner, and from the top of the trees down the sloping rocky structure and mound of land at the bottom right hand corner. While the travelers were the focal point of the painting, I didn't focus so much on where they were in the painting but rather where they were headed and from where they had already traveled. I felt like a movie was playing out in my head when I looked at this painting and that was pretty incredible to me.

Henry Matisse
Festival of Flowers

In the Festival of Flowers, Henri Matisse produces an exceptional landscape with what I felt were rather unexceptional techniques. That sounds insulting, but there's nothing particularly complex in the composition of his colors, lines, or shapes and yet I was totally captivated by what became a living, breathing picture for me the more time I spent looking at it. Admittedly this painting fell to second place for me because I do prefer the intricacies of more realistic paintings, but like the Landscape with Ruin, I loved that there were more stories being told than just the obvious subjects of the foreground. This leads me to the composition: the radiating lines in the painting converge to draw the eye to the standing woman in the foreground and by doing so, the eye is also drawn to the woman seated directly under her. These subjects are important, but I also spent a great deal of time pondering why the man in the balcony above them was seemingly facing away from the women and the commotion in the street below. I also contemplated the reasoning behind certain people being clustered together in the manner they were. The ambiguous composition of shapes allows the viewer to form their own interpretation for these stories as well as the overall layout of the scenery. For example, I didn't initially read the accompanying background information on the painting so I viewed the dark figures on either side of the road as people gathering to look at different vendors selling art, flowers, and food, the cars were just two lanes of traffic, and the people in the road were simply crossing the street to go see a different part of the festival. But after spending more time with the painting, it definitely makes more sense to interpret the scenery as crowds watching a parade.

Gino Severini
Dancer at Pigalle's

I hate saying this painting came in last place because it really is captivating, but I personally wasn't able to extract a multi-faceted story from this piece like I was for the other two paintings. As far as composition is concerned, though, this painting is a close second behind Landscape with Ruin. In addition to elements of the painting literally coming out of the canvas, there's undeniable rhythm and movement in the composition of this piece that really brings it to life. When I first walked by the painting I didn't really appreciate the manner in which shapes were broken up and arranged to create a twirling dancer; I thought it was just some bizarre abstract landscape. Upon looking at it a second time, though, the leading lines (circular pink arrangements), the radiating lines (the spot lights shining down from the top of the painting), and the rhythm in the folds of the dress guided my eyes to see an uninterrupted image of a ballerina in motion. While I love that the execution of this piece required me to trust the flow of the artist's techniques, I didn't feel compelled to dig deeper in the story because the only true subject is the dancer. For me, there weren't any questions I asked myself that I needed to reflect on the answer.