Part of the Old Fortifications at Saint Lo, Normandy 1817

Curator: Here we have John Sell Cotman’s 1817 drawing, "Part of the Old Fortifications at Saint Lo, Normandy." It’s a pencil sketch with that delicate sepia wash that feels both ancient and immediate. Editor: It looks formidable, doesn’t it? Perched way up there. Almost as if the fortress is growing right out of the rock face. A rather theatrical composition, I must say. Curator: Cotman certainly had a knack for drama, though he grounds it, literally, in close observation. The layered lines in the rocks show this meticulous approach, contrasting with the looser sky above. This was made during a tour he undertook for a print series he hoped to realize... which he did through his etchings based on the very sketchbook it came from! Editor: Ah, so initially a utilitarian means, the artist as surveyor... Did these fortification become, say, a quarry later, materials plundered for other civic functions? I always wonder what happens to these massive structures as warfare evolves. Curator: Interesting perspective! Saint-Lô suffered immense damage in WWII, so maybe. It reflects a Romantic era fascination with ruins and power. The material world yielding to history. Editor: That it does, and consider what pencil allowed him—mass producibility via graphite mines and factory production... Cheap and able to achieve fine detail to further broadcast these monumental feats across his nation and abroad, to folks who may never touch the rocky surface, who encounter the scene only in print... Curator: Precisely! The drawing anticipates the etching process beautifully, with varied tones and line weights giving depth, especially considering that he made it “on the spot," out of doors... But I'm fascinated by the small figures at the base; aren't they quite literally dwarfed? It seems to give such grand scale... And makes it all somehow lonely. Editor: Those laborers or citizens really emphasize the relationship between human labor and architectural ambition. Their place seems almost incidental, their stories perhaps subordinate. The material’s availability shaping a history and dominating individual human agency on the path that follows the road toward the fortress. Curator: Yes, there’s that inherent tension of something seemingly imperishable with fleeting lives underneath. Food for thought, that a fleeting drawing can raise such issues of time, scale and impermanence. Editor: Definitely a piece where we have architecture, labor, materiality and human endeavor coalescing in one rather fetching view. I leave, perhaps, with more questions of material culture now…