Rejsedagbog 1845

Curator: This is a page from Johan Thomas Lundbye's travel journal, dating back to 1845, currently held at the SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark. Editor: It has an ethereal, almost dreamlike quality to it. The sparse ink lines give the impression of a place both familiar and distant, heightened by the open book format and glimpses of travel notations on the opposing page. Curator: Indeed, the visible text reinforces the work’s nature as a diary entry. Observe the depiction of what is likely “La Tour de la Bâtiaz” in Martigny, Switzerland. You can clearly see not only the tower, but also his quick jottings. Editor: Precisely. Lundbye uses the constraints of the sketch book form and quick inks to define space. Look how he captures the sunlit walls using hatch marks against shadowy sections of the fortress; the mountain receding in the background becomes one and the same as the architecture through his reduction of form and contrast. Curator: That focus reflects the ethos of Romanticism—where landscape mirrors states of feeling, where our presence reshapes the view, and every experience becomes data that constructs us anew. The diary format itself underlines this subjective experience. This page, detached, still communicates an intimate record, which perhaps says much about romantic sensibilities and personal reflections in art. Editor: Absolutely, it transcends the merely representational. One is struck by the way his chosen composition isolates it in time; what emerges is the emotion imbued in the rendering itself rather than historical details. His quick penstrokes show so much; one becomes equally interested in his notations around the edges of his sketch. Curator: Seeing his journal opened like this grants a wonderful view of a mind processing new locales, histories, feelings—it's very insightful. Editor: A perfect fusion, in the end, of image, notation, observation, and sensation.