In his concept sketch,
Oscar Björck (Swedish, 1860-1929) shows a fisherman hastily putting on his gear, responding to a distress call.
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| Sketch for A Signal of Distress "Et nødskud" by Oscar Björck |
His wife and kids anxiously peer out through the window. We can see the shining horizon and the dark sky. Evidently a ship is in desperate need of rescue, because the title tells us that a shot has been fired to call the alarm.
In the final painting, the artist decided to crop the scene tighter. The fisherman is gone, his meal is uneaten, his chair is pushed back, and the door is thrown open. The focus is on the family's reaction. Only the baby is unconcerned and unknowing.
Less action sometimes yields more drama. Tighter cropping sometimes opens up a story.
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I think it could be cropped even tighter, losing the chair and door, without losing any more of the meaning or drama that is lost without the man. Looking more like a closet than an entry, I didn't recognize the door as having meaning until you pointed it out. The chair did not immediately imply the man's chair to me, and I mistook the way the chair might have been facing, so it also could be cropped in my opinion. The uneaten meal could have been the man's, but it could also have been the wife's. However, without the man donning slickers while looking outside through the interior window, I lose the information that someone within the house is being viewed by those inside the house, and that this is a seaside locale. A title is necessary to inform the scene, leaving plenty of room for each viewer's imagination to fill in the story.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thoughts. I think the case can be made to crop this tighter, to a square. And a case can be made to keep a wide cropping. Check out a comparable painting: "Hopeless Dawn" by Frank Bramley, which is a wonderful composition of loss at sea with a rather wide stage-like cropping, but it works quite effectively: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Frank_Bramley_-_A_Hopeless_Dawn_1888.jpg
ReplyDeleteThe Bramley painting, in my opinion, is a solid composition. Nothing that I see in that painting can be cropped without seriously damaging important information required for the scene to work. You could possibly lose the table and still have enough information to understand the intent, but the low candle and the overcast lighting on the white table cloth from outside add not only information but also mood. Although depicting different moments, I much prefer "Hopeless Dawn"; nevertheless, I would have liked to have seen a finished painting of Bjorck's 'A Signal of Distress' which includes the man donning slickers for it would add movement, or action, and drama that neither finished painting alone possesses.
ReplyDeleteExcellent!
ReplyDelete"Simplify. Simplify." Henry David Thoreau
I am so enjoying the posts where you look at a piece and highlight some of the artist's choices. Have you ever done Las Meninas by Velazquez?
ReplyDeleteI am so enjoying the posts where you look at a piece and highlight some of the artist's choices. Have you ever done Las Meninas by Velazquez?
ReplyDelete