Conway Castle 

Curator: Before us is “Conway Castle”, an oil painting by Thomas Moran. He created it while working in plein-air. Editor: There’s such a soft quality to it. The greens in the foreground gently rolling towards this faded vision of a castle on the horizon. A very pretty, idealized rendering. Curator: Moran employs aerial perspective to give us a clear foreground that loses clarity as we move further back into the painting. The textural brushstrokes become finer, mirroring how our vision focuses on nearby objects more acutely than distant ones. Editor: That use of perspective makes the castle seem more dreamlike, reinforcing the Romantic sensibility of the work. I see Conway Castle not as a solid defensive structure, but more like a fairy-tale kingdom, rendered distant by time and perhaps idealized by nationalistic feeling. The painting offers an invitation to see landscape as emblematic of identity, right? Curator: In part, yes. Although Conway Castle was commissioned by a private collector, Moran and other landscape painters popularized specific places to signify a burgeoning national or cultural identity. Art served the interest of public sentiment. Editor: I agree, but from a formal perspective, notice how Moran juxtaposes rough texture in the vegetation in the immediate foreground, giving way to the flat blue strip between the sea and the horizon, punctuated by the form of the castle? Curator: Yes, this contrast in form allows us to move our eye, without getting visually trapped, back to the focal point. Editor: For me, though, the human element feels very absent. The composition choices push the actual Conway castle further and further back until it is simply another soft form among the distant hills and vague cloudscapes. Curator: Well, I feel we've shown how Moran blends artifice and observation, structure and Romantic feeling. Editor: Leaving viewers much to consider regarding the nature of artifice itself.