Hooibaal 1867 - 1935

Maurits van der Valk made this etching, Hooibaal, at an unknown date. It is now in the Rijksmuseum. Looking at the etched lines that create this scene of haystacks, I’m reminded that art-making is really about a record of gestures. It’s an archive of movement and pressure. Here, the scratchy, chaotic lines build up a sense of volume and texture. Van der Valk’s method reveals everything about the process. You can see the individual marks, the directions he moved in, almost feel the scratch of the needle on the plate. Look at the smaller stacks of hay in the foreground and how they seem to cascade down the picture plane toward us. There’s a real sense of depth created by the density and direction of the lines, like a map of the artist’s hand moving across the scene. It feels connected to the linear energy of someone like Van Gogh, although maybe a little bit more restrained. But in both, there’s a similar kind of obsessive mark-making that animates the whole scene.