Brug in Parijs 1872 - 1932

Frans Smissaert made this small etching of a bridge in Paris sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Look at the way the lines swarm together to give us the stone and the water, the sky and the trees. I can imagine him out there, watching people crossing from one side to the other, and then back in the studio, trying to capture the feeling of being in a bustling place. The whole thing feels immediate, drawn from life. I wonder if he worked on the plate directly, outside, en plein air, as they say. Imagine scratching those marks into the metal, the pressure of the tool, the decisions about where to leave the white space. The whole thing has this nervous energy, kind of reminds me of James Ensor or Whistler. Smissaert wasn't trying to give us a perfect picture, but to distill the essence of a moment. That’s what etchings like this can do. They are a bridge to a time and place.