Continued from last Message:- 

  " The search for character of place invites the sightseer to look beneath a landscape's broad outline to study the particular aspects of scenery. Gordon Cullen calls this process seeing in detail.  He believes that that the eye must be trained to this kind of subtle seeing because it does not develop without deliberate effort." (from Jakle,  op.cit. pp.80)

    Within the context of landscape appreciation, I'd venture to say that the process of appreciating entails largely the search for character  in a given landscape, this in turn, entails the process of seeing in detail which, to be effective, requires "a trained eye". This requirement is common to both works of (visual) art and landscapes.  As Ian Whyte aptly writes:

 While scenery is considered to be something to which everyone can react aesthetically, landscape is something to be examined with a trained eye.

.  "However and whenever acquired, seeing in detail vastly enhances landscape experience as the sightseer, as observer, comes to savor the nuances of place distinctiveness" (Jakle, op.cit. pp.81)

 

   While contemplating a landscape we usually take-in the scene as a whole while, with variable frequency, focusing in particular regions or slabs within our field of vision. Take for instance the landscape depicted below:

  

              Camille Pissarro,  Rye Fields

                Oil on Canvas,1877, (Private Collection)

          ( If you cannot see the image Click Here )

   Some details may catch our attention for longer times than others. If the eye lingers exclusively on some particular details ( more on them  later on ) we risk not experiencing the landscape as a whole. On the other hand, not paying attention on details might lead to visualizing a somewhat lifeless, inanimate scene. It requires the percipience of a trained eye to attain the proper balance of attention paid to whole and details and it requires cognitive skills to ascertain the relations between particular features and of given features with the scene( composition?) as a whole. As Jakle notes "seeing in detail is a search for mutual dependence between part and whole".

   To be continued…