In last night’s talk I touched on the significant, but largely unexplored, subject ‘the use of the incidental bird in landscape painting’. The point is that a small and distant bird figure can draw the eye and create quite a different
effect for the viewer from a view with the bird omitted. The painter must exercise care to avoid the bird becoming so clear and prominent that it dominates the landscape. Below is an example, a fairly subtle one, of use of the incidental bird. Does the
bird bear any relation to the incidental marsupials below?
(I shall offer one more example, a more blatant one)
