Composition: follow your eye through a painting
Use Caillebotte’s rainy Paris street to explore scale, lines, and the edges of a picture.
Composition means arrangement
Composition is the way an artist places shapes, figures, colors, and spaces within a picture. It can guide your attention, suggest depth, or make a scene feel balanced or unsettled.
Caillebotte painted Paris Street; Rainy Day in 1877. The Art Institute notes that the scene depicts an intersection near his home. Its subject connects him with the Impressionists’ interest in modern urban life, while his handling of the figures and buildings is more precise than the loose brushwork often associated with the movement.
Follow the street into the distance
Start with the people closest to you. Compare their size with the small figures farther down the street. That difference helps create depth. Now follow the edges of the buildings and pavement into the distance.
Find the lamppost. Notice how its vertical line divides the scene. Does your eye move along one side more readily than the other? There is no required route through a painting, but tracing several routes can show you how the arrangement holds together.
Look at what the frame leaves out
The figure at the right edge is partly cut off. Cover that edge with your hand and imagine a wider frame that includes the whole person. How would the scene change?
A crop can make a view feel close, interrupted, or ongoing beyond the picture. Try sketching the painting as five large shapes, then change where one edge falls. Compare the result with the original. When you browse the archive, look for another painting that places a figure near an edge. Ask what that placement contributes before you read its label.
Explore the paintings.
Explore more Impressionist paintingsRead next
Impressionism: a place to start
Learn what changed in Impressionist painting, then look for it in a landscape by Monet.
Read articleMonet’s Water Lilies: look beyond the flowers
Explore reflections, brush marks, and the space between the lilies in Monet’s pond.
Read article