A Man with a Portfolio, Taking Snuff. Verso: Beginning of a Girl’s Head 

Curator: Here we have "A Man with a Portfolio, Taking Snuff," an intriguing ink drawing from the 18th-century British School, its date unspecified. Editor: He looks positively gleeful, doesn't he? All spindly legs and affected grace. I wonder what's in that portfolio? Curator: Perhaps it’s the tools of his trade? The lines are so evocative, like a cartoonist capturing a fleeting expression. He's all sharp angles and powdered wig. Editor: Yes, but look at the economy of line! And the brown ink—likely iron gall, made from tannin and iron salts—eating away at the paper, slowly fading the pomposity. Curator: It gives him an ephemeral quality, though. As if he might disappear in a puff of snuff. Editor: Or in a commentary on the material culture of the era – what survives, what fades, and the processes by which these images were made and consumed. Curator: True, a reminder that even the grandest gestures are eventually rendered delicate by time. Editor: And by the materials that bear their image.