the composition, emphasizing the cumulative

effect of the rhythm of the groupings as they

move from left to right. Because the composition
is so horizontal, the design emphasis directs
our gaze sideways using a linear direction and
rhythm. By changing the width of the gaps
between the animals, Bonheur suggests their
irregular movement as they plod forward,
drawing the heavy plow. Each group also has a
different relative size and occupies a different
amount of space, creating a visual rhythm and
energy that pulls our attention from left to right.
The careful composition and rhythmic
structure in such paintings give an air of
respectability and nobility to laborers of the
field and the hard work they had to do. Bonheur
may have been sympathetic toward those who
worked outside of the stuffy social order of
the time, since her gender may have been a
disadvantage in a traditionally male profession.
Yet her effort to bring respectability to such lives
and labor did not seek to glamorize her subject:
in this painting she insistently reminds us of
the slow physical rhythms created by the brute
strength of these beasts and the irregularity of
the plowmens’ steps as all of them, men and
cattle, work together to turn the weighty soil.
The Spanish painter Francisco Goya
(1746−1828) uses differing visual rhythms to
denote ideas of good and evil in the work The
Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1.9.13) from
the series “The Caprices” (Los Caprichos). Long
considered one of the most significant Spanish
painters, Goya established an expressive painting
style and is well known for chronicling the harsh
realities of the Napoleonic occupation of Spain.
“The Caprices”, however, is a strange, intriguing,
and sometimes disturbing series of eighty
etchings and aquatints depicting subjects as
various as the clergy, witches, and prostitutes.
The use of aquatint, particularly, heightens
the contrast between dark and light, creating a
shadowy, mysterious quality. The focus of the
series is fantasy and invention, or the artist’s
imaginative powers. In fig. 1.9.13, particularly, he
depicts the artist’s dream (this is indicated in the
inscription at lower left). But as the title suggests,
the image is more than just a fantastical vision: it
seems likely that the artist was expressing a belief
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