John Linnell’s oil painting Gravel Pits, exhibited at the British Institution in 1813 (fig. 1) describes an open gravel pit on once verdant land, a yawning breach that narrows as it moves horizontally across the surface of the 2.3-by-3.7-foot canvas, to reveal a cross section of the Earth’s strata. The excavated gravel and sand rise in piles on the near bank. Scattered near the pit’s edge, five men, two adolescents and a woman are at work. On the far side of the pit, a terraced road cuts into the slope, and farther up awaits a wagon hitched with horses, ready to haul away a load of gravel. The pit and the piles of individually delineated pieces of gravel shimmer in the sunlight.

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