River Winding through a Rock Formation (Philae, Egypt) 1884 - 1885

Curator: My first impression? Serenity, definitely. The somber gray and white palette with all its gentle gradients has this tranquilizing effect on me, almost meditative. Editor: And we are indeed meditating upon "River Winding Through a Rock Formation (Philae, Egypt)" dating back to 1884-1885, created by the multi-talented Edward Lear, a master of limericks, as well as landscape. He worked here primarily in pencil, and with dry media, the scene capturing a certain type of awe when confronted with the sublime grandeur of nature. Curator: Sublime grandeur achieved with a humble pencil, though! Makes you think, doesn't it? About access, about the democratisation of art. Anyone with a pencil and a decent eye could, theoretically, capture a scene like this. It levels the playing field a little, knowing he wasn't reliant on some expensive pigment only royalty could afford. Editor: Absolutely. Consider the paper too—the support system for his grand vision. Lear probably sourced it locally, from Egypt. That brings up all sorts of ideas of commerce, of colonial resource extraction, you know. He may have needed permission to sketch in that place. Someone needed to turn the raw material into this surface. There's a whole infrastructure involved. Curator: But there’s a stillness, almost a hushing of human involvement despite the obvious trace of his hand, like the scene has existed and will continue long after the artist and I cease to exist. Perhaps, it’s this sense of the river's patient determination cutting through stone that holds such captivation for me. Editor: It's clever how the pencil work really imitates geological textures as well, I mean he is trying to copy geological patterns, how time itself becomes a form of labor reflected in the image. The viewer gets some insight into history as material reality, and labor processes encoded into matter over unimaginable spans. Curator: So beautifully put. Ultimately for me this image offers us, paradoxically, an escape that connects us to ourselves and the world, all at once. Editor: Agreed. We're witnessing this amazing combination of art and geology, labor, materiality—a complex interplay of natural forces with historical economic ones.