Vesuvius 1939

Curator: I find this quite melancholic; there is a certain starkness to it that speaks to me of something deeply solitary, despite the breadth of the scene. Editor: Indeed. This is "Vesuvius," a landscape rendered in graphite drawing and print by H. Y. Summons in 1939. Its strength lies in the rigorous exploration of monochrome values and the use of negative space to create atmosphere. Curator: Graphite and print? I hadn't realized. That gives it such a subtle texture...almost like seeing the scene through mist. Does it strike you that the composition is rather…unsettling? The eye isn't quite sure where to rest. It drifts about. Editor: Precisely. Note how Summons uses the foreground elements, the trees particularly, to frame the distant volcano, but also to subtly disrupt a conventional landscape reading. Semiotically, Vesuvius isn't presented as a sublime force of nature so much as a distant, almost domesticated, form. Curator: Domesticated, eh? More like…brooding. Almost as if Vesuvius is ever-present, ever-threatening in its quietude. It’s more a state of mind, don't you think, than a depiction of geography? The looming unknown, ever present at the horizon. The quiet before... well, you know. Editor: Well, the careful modulation of tone draws the eye, doesn’t it? And the strategic use of the trees disrupts what might have otherwise been another work of British Romanticism. The drawing really demonstrates that the meaning is as much in what's not represented, as it is in what is. Curator: Yes, absence and suggestion, just what makes it stick. In the end, though, the artist asks more questions than he cares to answer, as it is often the best art I suppose. Editor: Indeed. An intriguing dance between form and feeling. Thank you for joining me. Curator: Thanks, fascinating dive!