Scene in a Cave 

George Cumberland made this watercolor, Scene in a Cave, sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century. Cumberland was part of a radical intellectual circle in London that included the artist William Blake, with whom he shared an interest in spirituality and the natural world. The image captures the Romantic period’s fascination with the sublime, inspiring both awe and terror, in this case through the visual code of the cavernous interior. Cumberland was a member of London’s Royal Geological Society, founded in 1807, when the science of geology was still quite new and often mixed with religious ideas about the origins of the Earth. Here, a lone figure lies supine in the foreground, his tiny candle a frail source of light against the immensity of the rocks looming above him. Is he a scientist, a mystic, or an explorer of the self? To further understand this artwork, one might explore the archives of the Royal Geological Society or read accounts of the period’s fascination with picturesque landscapes. The meaning of art resides in its moment, in its cultural and institutional setting.