Sketchbook page c. 1776

Curator: What strikes me about this sketchbook page by Gabriel Jacques de Saint-Aubin, housed here at the Harvard Art Museums, is how fleeting it feels, like a captured thought. Editor: Fleeting is right. It’s all soft edges and a kind of haunting gray scale, like a memory fading at the edges. Two studies here, one above the other, both hinting at grandeur. Curator: The upper sketch depicts an architectural interior, maybe a church, with soaring columns and a domed ceiling. The lower one seems to capture a bridge, perhaps over the Seine. Editor: There is an ethereal quality in both, achieved through the artist's light touch. Look at the way Saint-Aubin suggests form with minimal lines, it really is captivating. Curator: It's interesting how these sketches, though unfinished, convey a sense of depth and atmosphere. Editor: Absolutely. They feel like glimpses, and that incomplete nature is part of their allure. They invite our imagination to fill in the blanks, don’t they?