Gezicht op een laan richting een cipressentuin te Constantinopel 1742 - 1801

Curator: So, here we have "View of an Avenue Towards a Cypress Garden in Constantinople," a mixed-media drawing by Georg Balthasar Probst, dating roughly from 1742 to 1801. You have a moment? Editor: Absolutely. First impression? It's like a stage set, incredibly mannered, and the light feels almost…dreamlike. The scale feels off, intentionally so, and the palette is quite restrained but ornate with these colored pencils used. Curator: Restrained indeed. Look closely at the materials; we see pen, watercolor and color pencil all deployed to conjure up the imperial grandeur and the artist aimed to convey that by combining line, wash, and pigment to capture the built environment. And how architecture as commodity speaks volumes to the markets he created these images for. Editor: Commodity, yes, but it also feels…aspirational. These crisp strokes are an imagined or idealized Constantinople, a stage for fantasies and political theatre. Is there a level of exoticism in representing the landscape in that era? It almost plays as an intricate memory rather than a precise record. Curator: Undoubtedly, it’s a staged orientalism. Consider the labor and skill involved in producing a drawing of this complexity—the division of artistic labor within Probst's workshop becomes really palpable when you view other very similar architectural drawings from that same time. Editor: Right, the "workshop aesthetic" as a manufacturing hub of the era's collective idea of landscape as an exercise in colonial fantasizing, maybe. It's strangely compelling, both incredibly artificial and deeply evocative, with a melancholy feel to it that pulls at you. There is something there that calls you back! Curator: Its visual appeal to 18th century European sensibilities as filtered by an active, lucrative drawing shop is what makes it such a poignant record. Seeing through to that creative practice enriches how we understand it today. Thanks, your intuition never ceases to amaze me! Editor: The pleasure's mine! Perspective makes memory physical. Thanks for putting that together!