Lake, Maiori, Italy 1893

Curator: Robert David Gauley’s watercolor, “Lake, Maiori, Italy,” at the Harvard Art Museums, presents a serene coastal scene. Editor: It feels ethereal. The pale blues and yellows create a dreamy, almost melancholic atmosphere. Curator: Maiori, on the Amalfi Coast, has historically been a site of both leisure and labor, connected to fishing and trade. Gauley’s choice to depict it this way perhaps speaks to a desire for escape. Editor: The visible brushstrokes and the delicate layering of the paint suggest a slow, deliberate process. The materials themselves – the paper, the pigments – evoke a tradition of landscape painting tied to travel and observation. Curator: And the single sailboat becomes a focal point, inviting considerations of migration, exploration, even vulnerability within larger systems. It brings to mind questions of access and privilege in these spaces. Editor: I find myself wondering about the labor of leisure, the materials used to build the boats, and the hands that navigated them. Curator: Absolutely. The artwork allows for considering intersectional narratives of identity, gender, and power. Editor: It leaves me contemplating the relationship between place, perception, and the materiality of art making.