L'Entrée du Kergos 1906

André Dauchez made this landscape etching, L'Entrée du Kergos, and you can see it at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It's amazing to think of the artist, bent over a copper plate, using acid to bite away at the metal, slowly building up this scene of the French countryside. You know, the magic of etching is that the artist draws into the metal with a needle. It’s a kind of slow dance between control and accident, waiting to see how the acid transforms the lines. I can imagine Dauchez carefully rendering each needle stroke, thinking about the way the light hits the trees, the textures of the leaves. Those leaning trees in the foreground seem to be bowing to us as we enter a quiet space. And how wonderful is it, the way the trees in the background dissolve into a haze? Painters and printmakers keep the conversation going, you know, an ongoing exchange of mark-making ideas across time!