A Fortress in a Mountain Landscape at Sunrise 1810

Curator: Before us hangs "A Fortress in a Mountain Landscape at Sunrise" by Jakob Wilhelm Huber, a watercolor created around 1810. Editor: Mmm, the airiness of it! It feels almost like a dream, a fortress imagined rather than real. All those layers of blue… like inhaling the Alps! Curator: Right. The layers certainly contribute to its effect. We have to consider the shift happening at the time—plein-air painting was transforming artistic practice and our relationship to the environment, but also art patronage shifting, creating space for landscapes depicting specific geographical features instead of allegories, especially through more portable materials like watercolor. Editor: It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Was Huber more captivated by the imposing architecture, or the morning mist clinging to the mountains? I'd like to sit right there with the shepherd. Is that wool he's got on his lap? Feels comforting in the face of such a stoic stone castle. Curator: Interesting point. From a material perspective, you see how the use of watercolor allows for that contrast. It evokes a specific Romantic sensibility—emphasizing the sublimity of nature over, say, concrete social commentary about the castle's labor. However, one might argue the very act of rendering labor within this vast landscape implies it is part of, not separate from, its sublimity. Editor: Hmm, I don't know, those fluffy sheep are obscuring it for me. More seriously though, for Huber, perhaps this landscape WAS his labour, transmuting pigments and paper into something profound—capturing a mood of reverie... the slow churn of time on rock and wool. It makes me consider: is the real fortress that which keeps us apart, or that which grounds us to a time and place? Curator: That's a wonderful observation. It makes me think about the practical labour that informed it: grinding the pigments, prepping the paper, considering the material production within Huber’s particular social and economic context… a world of cottage industry, beginning to collide with burgeoning industrial practices. Editor: Always with the social! But yeah, I get you, you have given me something to consider further. It makes looking at the painting richer when I start looking beyond just the pretty scenery! Curator: Well, hopefully that makes our listeners' contemplation richer too! It goes beyond pretty, there is some thoughtful and materially grounded process that yields what feels like a purely visual sensation.