Heath Brow, Hampstead 1906

Muirhead Bone made this etching, Heath Brow, Hampstead, with marks like quick, dark scribbles. It's like he attacked the plate, digging in to pull out this scene. The image is full of trees; you can almost feel the breeze rustling through the leaves. I can imagine Bone hunched over his plate, scratching away, trying to capture the light filtering through the branches. There’s a certain intimacy here, a sense of the artist wrestling with the scene, trying to pin down its essence. It reminds me of Whistler's prints, that same attention to detail, but with a bit more grit. You know, artists are always talking to each other across time, borrowing and riffing off each other’s ideas. Bone’s got his own voice here, though; he's showing us a world that's both familiar and strange, solid and fleeting.