Rejsedagbog. Firenze 1846

Curator: Here we have a page from Johan Thomas Lundbye’s "Rejsedagbog. Firenze," or Travel Journal: Florence, dating back to 1846. It’s an ink drawing on paper, bound like a textile. It gives you that precious feeling of a personal sketchbook. Editor: Immediately, it reads as more literary than visual. It's packed with writing in tight lines, mostly dominating the page, save some open space at the upper-right. Curator: Exactly. Lundbye wasn’t just visually recording Florence; he was processing it, reflecting. He wasn't simply making a record of external experiences, but weaving feelings into his observations and sketching in response. Journals are places where the visible and invisible can convene. Editor: And thinking about art in the 1840s, the era of burgeoning Romanticism, that really tracks. Art increasingly looked inward for sources of subject matter. I find myself wondering about the power of the sketchbook as a place where social constraints are loosened, a place to freely imagine what art might be. What was Lundbye working through, institutionally, personally? Curator: Possibly the difference between seeing Florence through the filter of other people's paintings versus experiencing it with his own senses. It’s almost as if Florence were his co-creator in this “travelogue” made by way of his emotional life, through light and form, through architecture and art. Editor: There’s such an immediacy to these notebook pages. Lundbye takes a tradition – the Grand Tour – and then promptly imbues it with intimacy, bringing the tradition up close, writing his way toward himself, not simply through another canon. Curator: I love thinking of these notebooks as more than just visual fodder or personal artifacts. They're historical documents of feeling. Editor: Yes, that intersection, feeling as history, gives me so much to think about.