MY EYE LOOKS AT WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE PICTURE. James Gurney says that within a split second of looking at the drawing, his eye was drawn by the fact that the white space in the middle of the drawing was the back of a piece of paper. He soon worked out that the piece of paper was the Magna Carta, and that the king was King John. He concludes: “With the story in mind, my eyes scanned the picture driven by its human premise…. I’m quite sure my eyes never followed the pathways diagrammed by the FAC’s editors, and I never spent much time in parts of the picture that had no story purpose.”
I think that Gurney accurately describes how I looked at this picture and how I look at most pictures.
Tomorrow, by the way, is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.