La cité lointaine (Le marécage) - The faraway city (the marshes) Possibly 1873

Curator: Bresdin's "La cité lointaine (Le marécage)," housed here at Harvard Art Museums, really pulls you in, doesn't it? Editor: It's captivating, yes. There's something unsettling in its composition, almost claustrophobic despite the open sky. Curator: Bresdin, who lived from 1822 to 1885, was largely self-taught and worked outside the dominant artistic circles of his time. This print, "The faraway city (the marshes)," exemplifies his detailed, almost obsessive style. Editor: That obsessive detail is what strikes me. It feels like a world teeming with unseen life, both beautiful and potentially dangerous. Is that tiny city on the horizon a promise or a threat? Curator: I think that’s the ambiguity Bresdin often explored; the tension between the idyllic and the unsettling. His work resonates with the social anxieties of 19th-century urban expansion. Editor: Exactly! And it prompts us to consider the narratives we impose on landscapes, especially in the face of environmental precarity and our own displacement. Curator: Indeed. Bresdin's vision remains strikingly relevant today. Editor: Yes, a potent reminder of the stories embedded in the land.