The Hill of the Alhambra, Granada 1865

Curator: Standing before us is Samuel Colman's 1865 oil painting, "The Hill of the Alhambra, Granada," currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: What strikes me is the imposing presence of the Alhambra itself – that fortress really dominates the scene. It’s a study in sun-drenched stone. Curator: Absolutely. And that stone tells a story, doesn’t it? Look at the way Colman has rendered the different textures, hinting at the centuries of labour involved in building and maintaining such a structure. Think of the quarries, the transportation, the sheer human effort to bring it to life! Editor: It does seem to embody resilience and a kind of majestic defiance through the ages. It reminds me, too, of its layered history, from the Moorish rule, the subsequent Christian conquest... It echoes the cultural palimpsest it became, with overlaid meanings and memories. Curator: Precisely. Colman, though American, was tapping into a wellspring of European Romanticism. And that Romanticism involved a specific gaze towards labour, a kind of admiration for the 'primitive' forms of production still visible in these older, more “exotic” locales. Editor: Yes, the "exotic" – I wonder what it was about Granada that drew him specifically. Alhambra certainly holds immense symbolic importance in Islamic art and architecture with its complex geometry. Was he interested in this symbolism too, or simply projecting onto it? Curator: Hard to say definitively. We know he travelled extensively in Europe and that he was interested in representing light and atmosphere... I'd suggest the allure was multi-faceted – encompassing the monumentality of the site, but also, from a practical standpoint, the opportunities that unique location and its light allowed in terms of creating aesthetically striking watercolors. Editor: I suppose so. Ultimately, though, that architectural marvel projects power and grandeur across time. I keep thinking of the myriad untold stories hidden within those walls. Curator: A perfect encapsulation of that enduring visual potency, wouldn't you say? Colman has captured not just a landscape but also a distillation of human engagement and making of something truly astonishing from the very material the land provides.