The picturesque and the moral

There is an old photographers' joke that goes as follows:

One photographer tells another that his plane flew over a woman trapped on an ice floe on which she had written out the word "help" in her own blood. The second photographer asks the first what he did about it. The first replies by telling which camera he used, how he framed the shot and what f-stop and shutter speed he used.

Okay, it's an old joke and not very funny anymore. It does draw out an interesting issue about the picturesque. It matters what a picture is of. If, like Wordsworth, we construct a picture of a man whose son has died sitting all day long so consumed by grief that he is unaware of anything happening, we have to ask our self why exactly is this issue beautiful or even sublime.

In addition to the question of taste, there is a moral and pragmatic question. Austen doesn't touch on it here but she will in Sense and Sensibility.