Italienische Gebirgslandschaft 

Curator: Standing before us is Carl Maria Nicolaus Hummel's watercolor and ink drawing, "Italienische Gebirgslandschaft" - Italian Mountain Landscape. Editor: It has this melancholic, almost translucent quality to it, doesn't it? The light is gorgeous, that gentle, almost pastel rendering of the hills gives you this slightly wistful feeling… it feels very "days gone by." Curator: Hummel was working firmly within a Romantic tradition here, one where the sublime power of nature dwarfs humanity, represented by that tiny dwelling nestled in the middle ground, which seems quite insignificant when considered in relation to the trees, mountains and stream. You have to look quite carefully to make out human activity in this piece, which draws attention to nature's presence. Editor: The process fascinates me. Watercolor. Think about it – incredibly unforgiving. The labor intensiveness of working en plein air, carting around materials. Consider the paper stock of the time - did its sourcing support local industries, or did global trade networks play a role? We forget the materiality of the artist’s burden sometimes. Curator: Right, and the Romantic movement itself, even its name, seems bound up with an emotional yearning. This idea that through nature we find something "more." I sense in this particular landscape the same emotional tenor as a nocturne by Chopin or a poem by Keats. They sought truth or, at least, beauty. Editor: But let’s think about the consumption of these images. What sort of clientele were willing to pay for views like this? Perhaps individuals profiting from natural resource extraction sought a way of showing their refined artistic sensitivities through these delicate pastoral depictions. Curator: Perhaps! Though, speaking personally, standing here before the work, it stirs something much simpler within me. It is the desire to leave my day behind and wander into that distant scene. To be as much a small part of it as I am also irrelevant to it, you see? Editor: You dream of disappearing into a landscape defined by social and economic strata, made possible through human resourcefulness? Curator: Not so much to disappear, as…to realize the self. We are tiny but we exist and perhaps what binds us across time is that urge toward something greater, something beyond. Editor: Hmm. A potent use of raw materials for ideological aspirations. Let’s just agree, that Hummel, whoever he was trying to cater to, also knew what kind of beautiful image his work could create for his clients.