Art teacher speaking. Cropping is surprisingly easily to detect in an aesthetic image. Its kind of like reading a half-finished book. Aesthetic images are designed for an defined format. If that format is changed nearing completion, the geometry feels wrong. It is even easier in paintings, where there are overt brush marks. The structure of a brush mark is strongly framed by the format of the canvas.
Anyone interested in the recreation of famous incomplete paintings, should check out Manet's The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. This is a painting Manet gave up on, and chopped up into smaller studies.
Anyone interested in the recreation of famous incomplete paintings, should check out Manet's The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. This is a painting Manet gave up on, and chopped up into smaller studies.
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/media/33986/n-3294-00-000...
There are sketches that indicate the format he was aiming for, but Manet was a famous experimenter, so we will probably never know.