Landscape 19th-20th century

Editor: Here we have Denman Waldo Ross’s sketch, "Landscape," housed in the Harvard Art Museums. It's a delicate pencil drawing, almost dreamlike. What do you see in this piece, considering its process and materials? Curator: The visible strokes and raw paper signal an emphasis on the act of creation itself. Ross isn't just depicting a landscape; he's revealing the labor involved in its representation. How does the scale of the drawing influence your understanding of its materiality? Editor: It feels very immediate and personal because it is not large. It suggests a direct connection between the artist and the landscape. Curator: Exactly. And what about the annotations in the lower left corner? What role do they play? Editor: Those annotations seem to be pigment names. It makes me think that the artist might have been playing with translating color through tonal value, like a materials exercise. Curator: A crucial observation. By focusing on these material and technical elements, we gain insight into the choices Ross made, and how those choices were made in the context of art and labor. Editor: I never thought of landscape in that way before. Curator: Paying attention to the materiality reframes art history.