Pip and a watchman of the Temple chambers look for an intruder on the stairways, who is cowering beneath in the shadows.
The first chapter of the third volume picks up right after the end of volume two. On a stormy night, the convict Magwitch revealed himself to Pip. After getting him accommodated in Herbert's empty room, Pip falls exhausted into a sleep in his armchair, of which he wakes up later in the wee hours, in a dark room with all lights extinguished.
The new chapter then continues with him searching for a light at the lodge at the bottom of the stairs in the building. On the way down the stairs, he stumbles upon a figure cowering in the shadows. Alarmed, he rushes to the watchman in the lodge to investigate the person under a light. Back again, the hiding man is, however, not to be found again, despite them looking up and down the stairs.
In the end, Pip asks the watchman if he saw another person come in besides the convict, and, to his great distress, the watchman confirms having seen a man sticking to the convict like a shadow.
Thus apprehended, it marks the start of a race to get the convict out of this man's reach, who turns out to be a malefactor bent on settling counts with Magwitch.
About the composition:
Regarding the topic itself of Pip looking for the intruder, the novel does not waste more than a sentence, yet the scene seemed to me interesting enough for an illustration given the unusual setting of people on a staircase. The rest of the chapter eventually tells of the encounter of Pip and Magwitch and Herbert, which is in itself much more captivating to the reader, yet not very exciting to draw - just three persons standing in a room. However, the action involved in going up and down the staircase, as well as the dynamic of the light source, and also the fact the scene needs a special angle to get all characters on the picture, was far more alluring to draw.
I spent quite some time thinking about which angle to take. Other possibilities I thought about where to put the viewer outside, watching the intruder outside the mansion looking furtively back in the rain, while Pip and the watchman look up and down the stairs. Or even a picture in which we see the whole scene unfolding from a bird's eye's view down the empty space in a stairwell.
The stairs themselves proved also to be a challenging object to work on. I was inspired by some Milanese spacious stairs that are not set in a rectangular fashion, but rather triangular, or spiralled.
The triangular opening allows for a more dynamic view up the empty space of a staircase.
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