Landscape with Cows 1917

Lovis Corinth’s Landscape with Cows is a print, made with etching, a process rooted in industrial techniques. To make this image, Corinth would have coated a metal plate with wax, then scratched his composition into it. This exposed metal would then be bitten by acid, creating grooves. The plate is inked and wiped, leaving ink only in these grooves, and then pressed against paper. The resulting image has a wonderful tonal range, from the delicate lines of the foliage to the deep blacks of the shadows. You can see the way that the artist has used this process to suggest the dappled light filtering through the trees, and the texture of the grass. Corinth was fascinated by the way that industrial processes could be used to create art, and he was a master of etching, aquatint, and lithography. These processes allowed him to create multiple copies of his images, making his work more accessible to a wider audience. In that respect, Landscape with Cows is both a beautiful and skillful work of art, and an example of the ways that artists can engage with the social and economic forces of their time.