Landscape with a Waterfall 1816

Curator: Well, right off, there's this hushed quality, isn't there? A cool sort of gray-blue light… like holding your breath as you round a bend and suddenly—a hidden waterfall. Editor: Hidden, certainly, and I'm curious about the blend of materials: we're looking at a drawing, circa 1816, called *Landscape with a Waterfall*. The artist, Johann Christoph Rist, employed tempera, watercolor and perhaps some kind of printing technique to create this effect. It is at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Curator: The mixed media makes sense; it has this liminal, fleeting feel to it. It reminds me a little bit of those half-remembered dreams. The cascade isn't overpowering. More like a suggestion of water… like he caught it in a daydream. Editor: Precisely, though let’s consider how printmaking—likely etching or lithography in Rist's time—would necessitate collaboration or the means for wider circulation. Romanticism embraced nature as sublime and also as a saleable, reproducible commodity. What tension might exist there? Curator: Mmm. I do find myself thinking about "sublime." It captures that tension so well—beauty and terror coexisting, which I think is right there in those rough hewn edges and delicate colors! I can feel the Romantic longing in this piece. A quest for…something just out of reach. Editor: Yes, "out of reach" but not detached from a network. Each of these lines suggests labor, both artistic and material. The paper's texture, the pigments' sourcing, even Rist's apprenticeship – all speak to an extensive material culture surrounding this landscape. Did the making transform how the waterfall was then viewed or felt? Curator: It reframes my perspective for sure. Before I was drawn into the quietness. Now I’m starting to really hear that flow, that making that you mentioned—and appreciate its complexity! Editor: Exactly! We are implicated in the landscapes we produce, just as they implicate us. Curator: Lovely… Thank you for that shift in perspective. It reminds me how even the quietest pieces can roar with ideas!