Ossian og Everallins ånd 1783 - 1816

Curator: C.G. Kratzenstein Stub’s “Ossian og Everallins ånd” from between 1783 and 1816 offers us a glimpse into Romantic sensibilities. It's an ink drawing held at the Statens Museum for Kunst. Editor: It's mostly outlines; you see the pencil underneath, right? Even unfinished, it has this weightlessness to it, almost like a dream fading at dawn. Curator: Dreams are fitting here. The piece pulls from James Macpherson's "Ossian" poems. These texts claimed to be translations of ancient Gaelic bards, hugely influencing Romanticism's obsession with the past. Look at how Everallin's spirit, that wispy figure above, embodies yearning. Editor: Right, there’s definitely labor involved in giving the ink a flowing look like that – lots of layering of translucent wash? Even the sleeping figures have a solidity versus her ephemerality… how deliberate. What materials would he have used? Was the paper stock of the period widely available? That surely influenced the ease with which he could obtain the goods. Curator: We see the legacy of Ossian manifesting a kind of longing for a heroic past—for a world of warriors and ethereal beings. Editor: But there’s that heroic veneer overlaid on something more ordinary. He used basic materials. His hand— Stub’s own physicality-- and available paper give us access to a specific time, so far away now. It shows how artists were adapting the epic for wider consumption and challenging classical models of history. Curator: Absolutely. And think about the use of line; so delicate to depict these grand themes of love and loss. It is intriguing, isn't it, to see this imagined heroic world rendered so delicately on paper. Editor: A closer look, for me, brings out questions of the drawing’s provenance, and of labor too: of producing and moving stock. Something seemingly small contains multitudes!