Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/133

COMPOSITION is not one of these rules, nor one of the old conventional tenets, that cannot occasionally be disregarded to advantage. No! in this I am mistaken. There is one rule at least which must never be broken—the rule which says "thou shalt not paint two pictures upon one canvas"; for the house which is divided against itself inevitably falls to the ground. But I have seen an excellent picture in which the horizon line bisected the canvas exactly in the centre—the necessary balance being achieved by other means. I have also seen pictures in which the repetition of the dominant line added a strange beauty to the canvas. "Don't crowd your composition." Let your tree or your mountain have breathing space. Keep them away from the edge of the frame. They will gain in dignity and apparent bigness by [97]