Mt. Baker and Mt. McKensie [recto] 1894

Curator: Ah, yes, here we have Samuel Colman’s 1894 pencil drawing, "Mt. Baker and Mt. McKensie." Editor: It's remarkably simple, isn't it? Just shades of gray, conveying this impressive sense of scale and the overwhelming presence of the mountains. I'm struck by the atmospheric perspective—Baker fading in the distance above the immediate and dominating Mount McKensie. Curator: Colman, even with the simplest tools, masterfully captured not only topographical likenesses, but also the emotional weight these mountains carried in the cultural imagination of the time. Mountain ranges often serve as metaphors for the insurmountable, the divine, or, in Romanticism, the sublime confrontation between nature and humanity. Editor: Absolutely, and think about the labour embedded here. Colman sketching *en plein air,* exposed to the elements. Pencil was the ideal medium, portable, accessible. This wasn't about some grand statement with expensive oils; it was immediate documentation of place, tied to his own physical experience of it. Was this intended as a study, do you think, maybe for a larger painting? Curator: Possibly. It certainly has the immediacy of a field sketch. I'm particularly drawn to the ethereal quality of Mount Baker, how he uses very faint lines to suggest its massive form shrouded in mist. It speaks to how these landmarks represented more than just geographic points; they were symbols of exploration, settlement, and the West's untamed wilderness. They could also have represented, especially at that time, ideas of expansionism. Editor: I keep coming back to that relationship between effort and accessibility, it is interesting to know the brand of pencil used and paper too, and this direct, unpretentious method and message it sends. Look closely. The texture! Even within the grey, you feel the crunch of snow, the solid permanence of rock against an open expanse of sky. The pencil captures that with just tonal variation and suggestion. Curator: Well, seeing it framed in terms of production helps bring us down, so to speak, from that romantic mountain top. Thank you for these concrete and grounding elements. Editor: Of course. It has given me such a new sense of materiality present in what appeared simple at first sight!