A Sailing Ship [verso] 1839 - 1845

Curator: Edward Lear created this drawing, “A Sailing Ship”, sometime between 1839 and 1845. It’s a pencil drawing, a landscape, really a quick sketch more than anything else. Editor: The immediacy of the lines really strikes me. You can almost feel the artist capturing the scene in real time. What's most evident to me is that its lack of detail focuses our minds to see it as more than just an image of "ship"; it also reflects what goes into sailing these boats. Curator: It is interesting to view it this way: considering ships during this period were often tied to global colonial projects, transporting both goods and people, and it's important to interrogate who profits from these journeys and whose labor makes them possible. These stark lines might illustrate that difficult process of moving bodies. Editor: Indeed. Lear’s rapid strokes give it that unrefined feeling of labor as the driving material. The drawing style itself highlights the sheer effort and labor put in such ventures at this point in history. Curator: We must consider how Lear's social standing granted him a specific lens through which to view and depict these maritime scenes. It prompts a broader reflection on how artists participate in—or critique—the power structures of their time. His biography as an Englishman puts things into context: how many others were aboard this ship as well and how did they interact. Editor: It is certainly revealing to see this sort of maritime labor through pencil, rather than, say, oil paint on canvas. This choice gives it an unvarnished sense of the moment of production; you can see how the material and means reflect one another as he sketches out a global shipping line. It truly causes you to pause and contemplate. Curator: Seeing it this way certainly urges me to reconsider the broader societal forces in the early- to mid-19th century: economic policies and systems that shaped not only art but also the world. Editor: A rather bare drawing of a ship ends up prompting some very difficult thoughts and considerations. I wonder what more careful scrutiny can yield if this piece does so much, given how much art history often has little relation with what is at the ground-level material basis of it all.