Composition - examples of note

[Mike McCarty]

Ant,

I can only offer this, the opening line of the Dickens "A tail of two cities," describing England and France in the year 1775:

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

*****

And just when I was trying to battle out of my closely cropped period I happen upon this, from Jean-Leon Gerome, 0x15. This is enough to make a grown man cry. I am particularly drawn to these poses of children which show them at their less than chipper state. I have done more than a few of these myself.