Marianne Colston's art of walking

gendering the picturesque in journal of a tour in France, Switzerland, and Italy

Isabelle Baudino

pp. 85-98

in: Klaus Benesch, François Specq (eds), Walking and the aesthetics of modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

In Marianne Colston's travel narrative walking looms large. Though Colston does not depict herself as a walker, in the lithographs she published alongside her Journal we frequently find locals who walk and explore the landscape. Moreover, her interest in pedestrian mobility seems related to certain activities and social status. It is furthercomplicated, I argue, by her gender position: what is foregrounded in these illustrations is not an aestheticized view of the landscape or of country folks. Rather, Colston set out to create a visual space of her own, a space where she could be seen as an aesthetic subject rather than an aesthetic object.