Sketchbook of Figure and Landscape Subjects 1838 - 1863

Curator: What an intriguing collection of works bound into the volume the Metropolitan Museum of Art calls "Sketchbook of Figure and Landscape Subjects." This comes to us from Francis William Edmonds. We estimate that these graphite drawings on paper were compiled over the years 1838 to 1863. What stands out to you initially? Editor: Its emptiness. Beyond the few scattered smudges and incidental marks, this verso page offers us instead the stark materiality of blank paper within binding. A ghostly reminder of absence, you could say. Curator: It’s suggestive, isn't it? Sketchbooks, by their nature, offer us insight into the artist's practice and perhaps a glimpse into their intellectual processes. These pencil drawings represent a Romantic impulse, both in landscape and portraiture— Editor: But look at this J. B. Jansson label on the cover. To whom did this stationer sell the raw materials, the paper? Who bound this book and facilitated its use? Those processes leave their traces, no less valid than the marks made by Edmonds. Curator: That is precisely the mystery of this sketchbook, its unfulfilled potential held between those covers! It’s as though we are observing a container of dreams, dormant but full of symbolism nonetheless. A mirror waiting for its reflection. Editor: Indeed. A mirror, yes, made of paper—whose fibers once grew as a tree, now manufactured, marketed, purchased… Think of the industrial apparatus and colonial resource chains involved. It may be quiet now, but its creation was anything but. Curator: We bring our own expectations to this emptiness. This space may beckon, offering room for interpretation, imagination— Editor: —or even revolution. Depending on the hand that wields the pencil, after all. Curator: A fittingly potent pause then, I'd say, allowing us to reflect upon potential realized or still to come. Editor: Before us now, material ready for its purpose. The tools awaiting their task.