The Suffering 1909

Auguste-Louis Lepère made this etching, called 'The Suffering', using fine lines to create a village scene. It’s all in monochrome and has a kind of dreamy effect – like looking at a memory, or a half-forgotten story. I can imagine Lepère carefully scratching into the metal plate, each stroke building up the image, a bit like knitting, but with ink. You can see this process in the way the thatched roofs are rendered, like bundles of tiny marks. What was it like to patiently build up this scene, dot by dot? The dark patches create a real sense of weight and depth, and the cross in the background suggests that the artist was thinking about human struggles, maybe the everyday kind. It reminds me of some of Käthe Kollwitz's prints – not in style, but in that quiet attention to the lives of ordinary people. It's like Lepère is saying: look, even in this small village, there is a whole world of experiences. We're all in this thing together!