View on the River Wye, Looking towards Chepstow 1844

Editor: So, here we have John Martin’s "View on the River Wye, Looking towards Chepstow," done in 1844 with watercolor and drawing. It gives me this serene, almost dreamlike sensation, but the cliffs on the left have a sense of the sublime to them. What do you see in this piece, beyond the immediate beauty? Curator: This isn’t just a pretty picture. It reflects a period of profound social upheaval in Britain. The Romantics turned to nature as a refuge, but it’s crucial to recognize *whose* refuge this was. The burgeoning industrial revolution violently reshaped lives, especially for the working class who were shut out of this kind of picturesque vision of tranquility. Look at the composition; how does the positioning of the viewer, high above the landscape, reinforce ideas about power and perspective? Editor: I guess I hadn’t thought of it like that, about access and perspective. The higher view definitely feels separate from the realities of the time for many people. It does almost seem removed. Curator: Exactly! Martin offers a vision of untouched nature. It romanticizes a very particular experience and implicitly excludes other narratives and realities. Do you see how that almost golden, hazy light, washes out the potential grit of real life? Whose story isn't being told here? What impact does that exclusion have? Editor: I’m starting to see that the seemingly harmless landscape hides a lot of complex social issues about who gets to enjoy this supposed natural beauty. And whose labour made it possible, if indirectly, for paintings like this to be made in the first place! Curator: Precisely. Thinking about art in relation to social justice allows us to see more than just what's on the surface; it allows us to start a conversation about the relationship between representation, power, and the lived realities of the artist's contemporaries, even our own. Editor: That gives me a lot to think about. I definitely see it differently now. Curator: And hopefully a different way to look at similar landscapes, too.