Landscape with Buildings and Monument, Baltimore, Maryland c. 19th century

Curator: This is Henry Bebie's delicate pencil drawing, "Landscape with Buildings and Monument, Baltimore, Maryland," housed at the Harvard Art Museums. Editor: It feels ghostly, almost like a memory fading— the pale pencil barely there on the paper, hinting at a cityscape. Curator: The very lightness draws me in. Bebie captured not just the buildings, but the airiness of the place, the way light filters through those trees. What materials did he have to hand, I wonder? Editor: The unhurried, almost casual sketch feels more like a meditation on place and identity than an architectural rendering. It's raw, immediate... Baltimore, as Bebie felt it, not necessarily as it was. Curator: A beautiful reminder that even the simplest materials, the most fleeting sketches, can hold profound truths. Editor: Absolutely, a delicate ghost story told in pencil.