Holt Heath, near Norwich 1818

Curator: Here we have John Sell Cotman's "Holt Heath, near Norwich," rendered in pencil around 1818. What's your first take? Editor: Whispers. It's all whispers. Barely-there washes and feathery lines suggesting this endless expanse. And yet, I can practically feel the wind and smell the heath. Curator: Landscape art like this in the Romantic period often explores themes of nature, but let’s focus for a moment on the figure. Notice how the small size of the lone traveler walking in the foreground path evokes a sense of solitude? What does it signify in relation to the landscape? Editor: Solitude, yeah, absolutely. The lone walker is on this never-ending trek, the world opens up but there's nothing on it. She's swallowed by the land. Also there is no strong sense of scale or detail making it difficult to orient, I want to understand the actual location in space but it refuses to allow such familiar spatial reasoning. This might have a symbolic dimension as well - being swallowed in a time or event perhaps, or memory itself, that does not abide normal spatial logics. Curator: Right. Cotman uses the lone walker, doesn’t he, as a kind of human symbol in contrast to the vastness, maybe reflecting ideas about human frailty in relation to nature. Look at the strategic use of the light; there’s the emphasis placed not on her but rather on the wide open and desolate background. The way he positions the shading invites your eye to follow the contours into the background—the figure isn’t central in any real way, right? Editor: I agree; even the rendering of foliage takes on this sort of formless, blobby almost dark contour. It is very unlike later more photorealistic and detail obsessed nature representations. It’s very Romantic, it evokes emotion rather than records observations about the world, like looking at nature through your own emotional baggage. What gets emphasized or exaggerated depends on your inner self rather than an "objective" feature of nature. And of course, like, that kind of recording is *always* filtered through personal perceptions anyway, Cotman just takes that as the entire purpose of the endeavor! Curator: It is. Well, there's certainly a melancholy to Cotman’s style that stays with you, and a meditation on time and solitude, yes. Editor: I'm walking away wanting to take long, pensive stroll through Norfolk myself. Alone of course!