A Memory of Caldera 1830

Editor: So, here we have Félix Achille Saint-Aulaire’s "A Memory of Caldera," a mixed-media print and watercolor created in 1830. It feels… intensely Romantic. All this detailed foliage and the little figure gazing into the wild landscape makes me think of the sublime, but what am I missing? What do you see in this piece? Curator: I see Romanticism definitely, but through a very specific colonial lens. Consider the date, 1830. The artwork is entitled “A Memory of Caldera,” pointing us to both a location, and perhaps, a fading experience. Ask yourself, who gets to have memories of "Caldera," and who is being erased from this landscape? Editor: So, it’s about whose perspective is privileged? Curator: Exactly! The lone figure becomes emblematic of a European gaze imposed upon the land. Notice how nature is depicted as both awe-inspiring and something to be surveyed and, perhaps, eventually possessed. Who is he, observing the scene? What relationship does he have to the Indigenous people of that land? Does the title imply a dispossession or appropriation? Editor: I didn't think about it like that at all! I was so caught up in the pretty scenery. So, even a landscape can participate in power dynamics? Curator: Absolutely! The visual language of landscape art has often been used to justify claims of ownership and dominance, framing certain cultures as entitled to these views. The figure in this work, in my opinion, makes it clear how these landscapes were tools of colonization, subtly embedding hierarchies. What do you think about Saint-Aulaire's choice to use printmaking here? Editor: Now that I am aware of that perspective, it casts a new light on everything. Maybe the print medium signifies a desire for the mass production and consumption of this romanticized vision? Thanks for sharing that view! Curator: Of course! It’s a reminder that we must read these landscapes critically. The politics of seeing are always at play.