Crowland Abbey c. 1804

Curator: This is John Sell Cotman's watercolour, "Crowland Abbey," currently residing at the Tate. Editor: It feels heavy, somehow. Earthy tones and the stark, skeletal remains of architecture... a bit melancholic, no? Curator: Cotman was fascinated by the bones of buildings. The materiality here is crucial – watercolour on paper, a fragile medium for a monument seemingly meant to last forever. Editor: Exactly! It's this tension that gets me. Decay immortalized in a fleeting medium. Did he consider the laborers? The hands that raised this abbey, only for time and tide to have their way? Curator: Perhaps he saw the sublime in that very erosion, the way nature reclaims even the most ambitious human endeavors. Editor: Maybe. Still, I wonder about the economic realities, the people involved in the building and the inevitable undoing. Curator: An elegy for ambition, then, seen through very different lenses. Editor: Yes, though it’s a reminder that even the grandest structures are built by hands, and crumble all the same.