A viewfinder is a frame artists use to isolate and compose a scene. From Klimt's cardboard cutout to modern adjustable tools, learn how viewfinders shape composition.
In August 1903, Gustav Klimt wrote a letter to his lover Mizzi Zimmermann from the Attersee in Austria. He described his search for landscape motifs: "used my viewfinder, a hole cut in a piece of cardboard, to search for motifs for the landscapes I intend to paint and found much, or nothing, if you will." The viewfinder, now in the collection of the Leopold Museum in Vienna, is a rectangular piece of cardboard, 9.5 by 5.6 centimeters, with a square hole cut in it. That is all it is. And yet this simple tool, which costs nothing to make and takes seconds to use, is one of the most effective composition aids available to any painter or draftsman.
A viewfinder is a frame, typically rectangular, that an artist holds up to the eye to isolate a portion of a scene. By looking through the frame, the artist sees the world bounded by edges, the way it will appear in the finished painting or drawing. The viewfinder eliminates visual noise from the surrounding environment and forces the eye to evaluate the scene as a two-dimensional composition of shapes, values, and lines rather than as a collection of named objects. It is the cheapest and most direct tool for translating the three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional image.
This entry covers what a viewfinder is, how it works, its history, the different types available, and how artists from Klimt to the present use it to find and refine compositions.
A viewfinder works by imposing a boundary on what the eye sees. When you stand in a landscape and look around, your eye takes in a panoramic view with no edges. Everything is potentially relevant, and the brain processes the scene as a three-dimensional space containing objects. When you hold a rectangular frame up to your eye, the scene is cropped. Everything outside the frame disappears. What remains inside the frame is a two-dimensional arrangement of shapes, values, and colors that corresponds to what you will put on your canvas or paper.
The viewfinder does several things at once. It isolates the subject, cutting away distracting elements and forcing a decision about what to include and what to exclude. It establishes the aspect ratio of the composition, the proportional relationship between height and width, which should match the canvas or paper the artist will use. It allows the artist to test multiple compositions quickly, moving the frame left, right, up, down, closer, or farther to evaluate different crops before committing to any one. And it helps the artist see abstract shapes rather than named objects, which is the cognitive shift that underlies accurate drawing and strong composition.
You can adjust the viewfinder's distance from your eye to change how much of the scene is included. Move it closer to your face for a wider view. Move it farther away to zoom in on a detail. You can also change the aspect ratio by rotating the frame (horizontal versus vertical) or by using an adjustable viewfinder with a sliding panel that changes the proportions of the opening.
The viewfinder is related to a family of optical and framing devices that artists have used for centuries to help translate the three-dimensional world into two-dimensional images. The earliest of these is the camera obscura, known since antiquity, which projects an image of the scene onto a surface through a pinhole. The camera lucida, patented by William Hyde Wollaston in 1806, uses a prism to superimpose the scene onto the drawing surface, allowing the artist to trace key points. The viewfinder is the simplest member of this family: it does not project or superimpose anything. It simply frames.
The use of framing devices in art has deep historical roots. Leon Battista Alberti, in his treatise Della pittura (1435), described a "veil" of fine thread stretched on a frame and divided into square sections by thicker threads. This device, now known as Alberti's Veil, was both a viewfinder and a grid, allowing the artist to see the scene divided into sections that could be transferred to a correspondingly gridded surface. Alberti wrote: "I set this up between the eye and object to be represented, so that the visual pyramid passes through the loose weave of the veil." Read about Alberti's Veil at Sight-Size.
The Claude glass, popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries, was another framing and viewing device. It was a small, tinted, slightly convex mirror that the artist held up to view the landscape behind them. The mirror reduced the scene to a framed, tonally unified image that resembled the landscapes of Claude Lorrain. The Claude glass was both a viewfinder and a tonal filter, helping artists see the landscape as a composed image rather than a raw visual experience.
Klimt's cardboard viewfinder, preserved in the Leopold Museum, is a direct and humble example of the tool. The square hole in the cardboard reflects Klimt's preference for square picture formats in his landscapes from 1899 onward. His letter to Mizzi Zimmermann reveals how the viewfinder functioned in his process: he used it to search for motifs, moving through the landscape and testing compositions before deciding what to paint. The Leopold Museum notes that "the use of viewfinders also betrays the influence that photography had on painting." See the object at Leopold Museum Online Collection.
Vincent van Gogh also used viewfinder grids. Traces of his drawn grid lines can be seen between brush strokes on some of his paintings at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh described using grid lines on his canvases to help with composition and proportion. The grid on the canvas corresponded to a grid in his viewfinder, allowing him to transfer the scene systematically.
Klimt's landscape paintings, including Attersee (1900, Leopold Museum) and Garden Path with Chickens (1911, destroyed), show the influence of his viewfinder practice. The square format of his landscapes from 1899 onward corresponds to the square hole in his cardboard viewfinder. Klimt's landscapes are tightly cropped, with no sky or horizon in many cases, suggesting that the viewfinder helped him see the scene as a flat pattern of shapes rather than a traditional landscape with foreground, middle ground, and background.
Van Gogh used viewfinder grids to help with composition and proportion. Traces of his drawn grid lines are visible on some paintings at the Van Gogh Museum. His The Starry Night (1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York) may have been planned with a grid, though the painting's expressive distortion goes far beyond any grid-based system. Van Gogh's use of the viewfinder grid reflects his systematic approach to composition, even in his most emotionally charged works.
Degas used cropping devices influenced by photography and Japanese prints. His compositions, such as Ballet Rehearsal (1874, Fogg Museum, Harvard), show figures cut off at the edges, as if seen through a viewfinder or camera lens. Degas was an early adopter of photography, and his compositional cropping reflects the photographic viewfinder's influence on painting.
Cezanne used his hands to frame compositions, holding them up to his eye to isolate motifs in the landscape around Aix-en-Provence. His Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings (1887-1906, various collections) show the tight, deliberate cropping that comes from viewing the scene through a frame rather than painting the whole panorama. Cezanne's compositions are built on the structural relationships between forms that the viewfinder isolates.
Wyeth used a viewfinder to compose his tightly cropped watercolors and tempera paintings. Works like Christina's World (1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York) show the kind of deliberate framing that a viewfinder produces: the figure is placed off-center, the horizon is low, and every element is positioned with intention. Wyeth's compositions have the quality of being seen through a frame rather than painted from a general view.
The simplest type. Cut a rectangle out of a piece of cardboard. The opening should match the aspect ratio of your canvas or paper. This is what Klimt used, and it costs nothing. The drawback is that the aspect ratio is fixed unless you make multiple viewfinders with different proportions.
A plastic viewfinder with a sliding panel that lets you change the size and proportions of the opening. The Viewcatcher, made by the Color Wheel Company, is a sturdy plastic version that fits in a pocket. Markings along the side help you set common aspect ratios linked to standard canvas sizes like 8 by 12 inches or 11 by 14 inches. The sliding panel also has a small hole that can be used to judge local color and tonal value, and the neutral gray plastic helps with value comparison.
A viewfinder with a grid of lines printed on or embedded in the viewing surface. Some have diagonal lines as well as horizontal and vertical ones, which helps with perspective and proportion. The Gridvu viewable grid system includes diagonal lines, making it useful for portraits and figure drawing. Gridded viewfinders combine the framing function of a viewfinder with the proportional transfer function of a grid.
Some viewfinders include red acetate or a neutral gray filter that helps the artist see value masses (light and dark areas) without being distracted by color. By looking through the red filter, the artist sees the scene in terms of tonal values rather than hues, which is useful for planning the value structure of a composition.
When you have nothing else, you can make a frame with your hands. Extend your arms, overlap your thumbs and index fingers to create a rectangle, and look through it. This is the quickest and most portable version, and it costs nothing. It is less precise than a physical viewfinder but serves the same basic function of isolating and framing a scene.
Hold the viewfinder at arm's length and close one eye to peer through the opening. Move the frame closer to your face for a wider view or farther away to zoom in on a subject. Walk around your subject while looking through the frame to test different vantage points. Look for compositions where major masses sit slightly off-center rather than dead center, which tends to produce static compositions. Test at least three different crops of the same scene: a wide view, a mid shot, and a close-up. Draw a small thumbnail sketch of each option before committing to one.
The viewfinder is also useful for matching the aspect ratio of your canvas. If you are painting on a 16 by 20 inch canvas (a 4:5 ratio), set your viewfinder to that proportion. What you see through the frame will correspond exactly to what will fit on your canvas, eliminating the problem of planning a composition that does not match your support.
The viewfinder is related to the grid, which adds a proportional transfer system to the framing function. It is also related to the camera obscura and camera lucida, which are optical devices that project or superimpose the scene. The viewfinder is used in plein air painting to find compositions on location and in thumbnail sketching to test composition options. For more on composition and seeing, read our post on reading a painting, or explore our guide to plein air painting.
The best way to understand a viewfinder is to use one. Take a piece of cardboard, cut a rectangle in it, and hold it up to your eye. The world changes. The panoramic confusion of shapes and objects becomes a composed image with edges. You start to see the scene as a painting. This is what Klimt was doing with his piece of cardboard on the Attersee in 1903, and it is what you can do today with the same simple tool.
For more on composition and drawing tools, read our entries on the grid and thumbnail sketch, or explore our post on chiaroscuro and composition.
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