Withyham Mill, Sussex c. 1795

Curator: This is J.M.W. Turner's "Withyham Mill, Sussex," held here at the Harvard Art Museums. It’s a pencil sketch measuring about 20 by 13 centimeters. Editor: There's a ghostly, almost dreamlike quality. The barely-there lines suggest transience. You can see the mill and its water wheel, but it feels like a fleeting vision. Curator: Turner was fascinated by the changing landscape, and mills represented a significant point of industry. The industrial revolution really impacted the way people viewed their place within society. Editor: Absolutely, and seeing it depicted so ethereally makes me think about the precarity of labor then and now. What does it mean to capture labor so delicately? Curator: Well, it also speaks to Turner's evolving style, his movement toward abstraction. Editor: Indeed, it asks us to consider the weight of industry with a certain lightness. Curator: Turner's legacy remains powerful because his artworks show us what history looked like as it was unfolding. Editor: And how those past landscapes still resonate with present-day conversations about labor and representation.