Final answer:
The narrator of Virginia Woolf's 'Three Pictures' captures the first scene with vivid, film-like detail, creating an impressionistic view that starts broadly and zooms in on specific characters as their image gradually blurs.
Step-by-step explanation:
In Virginia Woolf's 'Three Pictures,' the narrator's response to the first picture is marked by a detailed, almost cinematic description of the scene unfolding before them. The narrative starts by painting a broad picture of the setting, noting the human figures' 'curiously irregular' movements and the butterflies' 'zig-zag' flights. The written depiction transitions from a wide lens to a more intimate focus on the characters—the man and the woman.
This transition is akin to a camera panning across and then zooming in on the subjects. Furthermore, the concluding paragraph's description of how the characters 'diminished in size' and were covered by 'sunlight and shade' conveys a sense of their image gradually losing clarity, mirroring the visual effect of a film scene losing focus. Despite the myriad of details, the overall impression is one of an impressionistic tableau.