figures and shapes per se as to figures and shapes in the vicinity of the yellow. Bold patches of yellow are triangulated in the scene: in the right foreground in the figures of the pigs, in the upper-middle left side, across the lake, with a big patch of grass, and on the upper-middle right, where a yellow patch of grassy bank falls before one of the village houses in the distance. The cow's prominent udder, contrasting with the otherwise brownish-orange and gray cow as well as the water, is also yellow. In addition, shafts of yellow grass interlineate with the grassy green pasture in the foreground and highlight and define the distant farm fields in the background. There is even a yellow tint to the clouds and a faint white-yellow outline along both the distant horizon and along the rocky bank in the foreground. In its role as a participant in orange, yellow also appears in farmland, rooftop, shrubbery.
This use of yellow lends late-afternoon warmth to the scene. But the use of yellow can also be interpreted as part of a visual strategy that is meant to draw the eye, not to the yellow as such but rather to the figures around which it is organized. To be sure, the eye goes to the yellow first, but it does not linger there, nor is it meant to. Thus immediately one sees the pigs in the right foreground (the first point of the yellow-pointed triangle on the canvas), one is drawn to the figure of the swineherd (in blue tunic, brown trousers and cap, and clunky blue-gray shoes) who stands beside them, right hand under chin, left in his trousers pocket. Next the eye travels to the blue tunic, contrasted against the rocky bank, which is primarily the light gray of rocks but which derives its shape from the profusion of color and contrast that comprise its facets. Similarly, the patch of y
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