Study of Five Flying Figures, for "Fairies..."; verso: Peasant Family 1829 - 1833

Curator: Here we have Washington Allston's "Study of Five Flying Figures, for 'Fairies...'" It's a delicate graphite sketch held at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: My first thought? A fever dream! So airy and fleeting, like trying to catch smoke. Curator: Allston, though American, was deeply influenced by European Romanticism and the Gothic revival, seen in the idealization and spiritual themes of the figures. Consider the context of early 19th-century transcendentalism, too. Editor: The light touch gives them such a weightless quality! And the figures almost seem to be tumbling rather than flying, which evokes such a sense of fragility. Curator: Indeed, and it's interesting to think about how this work might relate to contemporary ideas of the supernatural, and how those ideas were often linked to concepts of power, gender, and the otherworldly. Editor: It's left me thinking about the beauty of the unfinished, the power of suggestion. Curator: Allston asks us to consider the interplay between the ethereal and the material.