At least as far back as 300 years BC, artists have been fascinated with an aesthetic mystery. Spiritual teachers call it the space between, mathematicians call it ratio, musicians call it the musical interval. Tradition has it that Leonardo was the first to call it the golden section. Several other labels have surfaced for it--the golden ratio, the golden mean, the divine proportion. To the painter, it's both the golden rectangle and the golden mean or ratio. It's all about a pleasing way to place and space our images.
To simplify, all rectangles contain within at least one square. What's added to the square determines the rectangle's ratio (length to width). A golden rectangle is the only one whose
rectangle within replicates the overall rectangle's ratio, and subsequent smaller rectangles continue to replicate that ratio to infinity. The ratio is 1 to .618∞ (most often shown without the infinity symbol).
Early cultures discovered that ratio to be an aesthetically pleasing, if not perfect proportion. Consequently, many artists rely on it for placing and spacing their images. It's a ratio that is repeated throughout
nature, including within the human body. (There are volumes about it online, even efforts to make it a myth.)
Painters use the golden ratio for placing images as well as the spacing between the images. Let's explore how Sargent played with it in his Fishing for Oysters at Cancale.
He began with a golden rectangle canvas shape. Then fit his major groupings of images within the golden ratio.
Then he fit the two main groups and their spacing within that same ratio.
And further used the ratio to group the empty space on the left.
Enjoy a weekend of perfect ratios!
During my Language of Painting series, I explained the role of our visual elements. If you'd like to review those roles to better understand the behavior of elements, here are the links to each of those
discussions: Color --Value -- Shape -- Texture -- Size -- Line and Direction
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