[title not known] 

Curator: This quick sketch, currently held in the Tate Collections, comes to us from the hand of Sir George Howland Beaumont. Editor: It feels fleeting, like a half-remembered dream of a rugged landscape. All greys and quiet suggestion. Curator: Beaumont, active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was a prominent figure in the British art scene. He championed landscape painting, deeply influenced by his appreciation for the picturesque and the aesthetics of Claude Lorrain. Editor: You can almost feel him, sketching in his notebook, trying to capture the immensity of the mountains with just a few lines. I wonder what moved him to stop and record this particular scene? Curator: It’s tempting to read into it a Romantic sensibility—a yearning for the sublime, perhaps? Beaumont’s work sits at the intersection of aristocratic patronage and the emerging aesthetic of the natural world. Editor: More than anything, I just love how unfinished it feels. It leaves so much room for the imagination to wander. Curator: Precisely. It invites us to consider the historical gaze, and its selective framing of the landscape.