Dimensions: support: 411 x 542 mm frame: 564 x 692 x 110 mm
Copyright: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Liensfiord, Norway: Calm by Francis Danby depicts a rather sublime landscape. What’s your take on it? Editor: The dramatic rock formations against the still water create a very melancholic mood. How do you interpret the relationship between humanity and nature in this work? Curator: This work speaks to the Romantic era's fascination with the power of nature. Consider the colonial context of the 19th century. How might this seemingly serene landscape also reflect a desire to possess or control the natural world? Editor: That's a perspective I hadn’t considered! It makes me wonder about the landscapes that were not painted, the stories that were silenced. Curator: Exactly. Art invites us to question whose perspectives are represented and whose are marginalized. It also begs us to examine our own. Editor: This has really opened my eyes to seeing beyond the surface of a landscape painting. Curator: Indeed. Art is never neutral.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/danby-liensfiord-norway-calm-t04104
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Danby visited Norway in 1825 but seems not to have painted any Norwegian subjects in oil until after he moved to Switzerland in 1831. By that time his memory of place names appears to have let him down since no such place as Liensfiord, the name inscribed on the back of this picture, exists: it has been suggested that Lifjord near Rutledal is intended. Danby, who had abandoned the quiet poetry of his Bristol days, was disappointed by the lack of 'Grandure' he found in the Norwegian landscape, though he admitted that it was 'wild enough. These kind of scenes are better in pictures than reality'. Gallery label, September 2004
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