Dead Men Tell no Tales by Howard Pyle

Narrative and Composition
The narrative in this picture is easily read and understood but he does it in a way as to not make it too obvious that it is uninteresting. We can tell right away that there was a standoff between the man in the back and the two pirates in the foreground of the picture over treasure that they found. If Howard had placed a chest of loot next to them I think it would have taken away from the mood of the picture and added another visual element that would distract from the drama on the man's face who is overlooking the scene.

The man standing with two guns and the face of the pirate who lies dead on the ground is our two main focal points. Like the man standing over the bodies trying to figure out the situation, we too are trying to figure out what happened. To give us a hint he places a shovel to the right that is pointing at the scene of the crime to let us know that this battle was over treasure. This shovel is almost hidden in the sand around it, if it wasn't for the slight highlight of the stick we would miss it since it is so close in color and value to the surrounding sand. He uses both the stick and the gun in the man's left hand to point us to the bodies and particularly the face of the fallen pirate.

Value
If we take the image and throw it into threshold mode in Photoshop we can see Pyle uses a negative space shape in the top of the picture to frame the story and puts another island in the distance to add visual interest. Its important to notice that no element of the story wanders out of this frame and he takes our eye from the back figure who is the next closest light value shape to the body of water and uses a trail to literally walk our eye back to the main focus of the picture. This can work both ways to lead us from or back to the foreground image. Its also important to note that the man who is alive is not visible in threshold mode because the values are contrasted with the white pants of the dead men, but the highlight on the gun is. If he himself was wearing the same kind of white pants there would be no contrast between the characters and would possibly distract from the focal point of the two faces.

Color
The lack of any bright colors in this scene makes it feel like this image takes place in a cloudy, humid day. He uses color in a very minimalist way to direct our eye exactly where he wants it to go without adding too many other colors to conflict with the image. The red in this picture is the only color standing out from the pale dull yellow and brown of the image and you can notice the color gets brighter and more saturated the further away it gets from us. This is atmospheric perspective in the form of color. If all of the red was at the same level of saturation it may not be as effective in leading our eye.

We also see he uses the only orange in the image to frame the head of the pirate laying dead on the ground. Even the orange on the pirate who we cannot see points to the man laying on the ground from the left side of the image. This draws our attention to his face which is an important element of the story since the blood running from his mouth is an important clue to the story. You can also see he does a similar technique with framing the standing man's head with a red cap and yellow green shirt.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Pyle
http://joshuawilsonart.com/influences-howard-pyle/