THE MAN BEHIND J.C. COLL'S DOOR

 

There's a lot going on in J.C. Coll's little drawing of a sword fight by a stranded stage coach.

Look how knowledgeable Coll's line is!  He understands that the coach would be tilted by the natural slope of the road, not upright.  He knows how the wheel would look caked with mud.  He even understands the suspension system of the coach, and is smart enough to make the lines dissipate before the details become boring.

There are six figures interacting in this little roadside ballet, each one posed with elegance

And each face, though tiny, retains its own integrity:

Hidden away in the back, behind the door of the coach, is another swordsman, this one a buffoon who couldn't quite make it out of the coach to defend the fair maiden.  (In the shadows we can just make out his hand fumbling the sword and his feet slipping out from under him.)

If you saw this illustration in a magazine today, who would even notice the small figure behind the door? It's debatable whether a narrative this complex even needed another figure.  

My point today is that this drawing was done in a very different era for a very different kind of audience, an audience that had time to linger over subtle details and get pleasure from small, hidden elements and surprises.  An audience without a computer or television competing for its attention, an audience that was not skimming over dozens of images, often in thumbnail sized icons.  That difference has a major impact on the incentives for the artist and the reaction of the audience.