Rio Ca Pessaro and Rio dei Frari, Venice 1841 - 1897

Curator: This is "Rio Ca Pessaro and Rio dei Frari, Venice" by Andrew Fisher Bunner, likely created between 1841 and 1897. The artist employed ink and pencil on paper to depict a detailed cityscape. Editor: Immediately, I feel this kind of… peaceful stillness. It's just buildings and water, captured with such precise lines, almost like the city exhaled and let him sketch its portrait. There’s an undeniable charm in seeing a familiar place rendered in such a timeless medium. Curator: Considering the timeframe, Bunner was working during a period of great social and political transformation in Europe and the Americas. Depicting Venice, a historically significant mercantile hub undergoing its own shifts, allowed artists to reflect on themes of urbanization, cultural heritage, and the evolving identity of cities. Venice, in particular, has a charged gendered and economic history, with profound implications even in modern times. Editor: Right, but personally? I am thinking how light plays on water... he must have stood there for ages, trying to capture that reflection. The pencil work makes it almost ethereal, even if it's all brick and stone. It almost reads as social commentary as how permanent architecture still transforms when reacting with the light of a temporary sun. Curator: We can also examine the buildings as more than just structures. Architecture has always been linked to power. The meticulous rendering can be interpreted as documenting a visual rhetoric—the story these buildings tell about their inhabitants, the societal values embedded within urban spaces, the inherent socioeconomic hierarchies of its time. And what are we to make of this viewpoint; it makes sure no people exist at all, suggesting this story has moved far past individual action. Editor: Wow. When I look at it I just see myself wanting to jump in the canal, to get splashed! The beauty transcends whatever old values built the canals in the first place, in my opinion. Curator: So you see something hopeful? Editor: Maybe naive optimism more than hope, but sure! It reminds me, regardless of the history of hard choices, of how even stone changes when it’s bathed in sunlight reflected by the lapping waters. Curator: It seems we both extracted something different and resonant from the same canal. It's often like that when regarding art from the past.