Dagbog. Side 65 1843

Curator: This is Johan Thomas Lundbye’s “Dagbog. Side 65” or "Diary. Page 65," made in 1843. It’s an ink drawing on paper currently held at the SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark. Editor: My initial impression is quiet contemplation. It's just an open journal page, but there's something intensely intimate about the spidery handwriting and the yellowish paper hinting at the past. It makes me feel like I'm intruding on a very personal moment. Curator: Diaries occupy an interesting space in Romanticism. On the one hand, they feel profoundly individual—Lundbye’s own musings—but these glimpses into personal feelings also helped to build national identity through shared sentiment, an awareness of place and, in Lundbye's case, the artist’s creative self-discovery. Editor: Yes, the handwriting definitely feels revealing. I wonder what he was feeling or thinking as he furiously scratched away, and about what, with such pressure—it reminds me of being a child and scribbling something intensely emotional in my journal when nobody was looking, and hoping no one would ever see it. But now, hundreds of years later, we're analyzing it as art! How funny is that? Curator: The content, in that sense, may almost be secondary. The important detail here is the document itself: its scale, its aging, its form. It really is something we think of as revealing truth about one's feelings, intentions, state of mind. We may not be able to read all of what’s here, but this is clearly one side of a private conversation the artist was having with himself. Editor: That’s right, you instantly feel it. And the use of ink only deepens that connection. The directness and starkness make it seem so immediate, cutting through all those intervening years and layers. You can almost hear the scratch of the nib on the page! Curator: Well, there it is—a page from Johan Thomas Lundbye's journal, filled with history and a mysterious story from nearly two centuries ago. Editor: A glimpse into an artist's soul. If you get a chance to peek, please, do linger a moment.