Jona zit onder de wonderboom in de buurt van Nineve 1900 - 1904

Wijnand Otto Jan Nieuwenkamp made this woodcut titled "Jona zit onder de wonderboom in de buurt van Nineve" in April of 1900. The whole thing seems to be made of lots of little lines, a teeming mass of marks to build up solid forms, and yet there's also something light and airy about it. If you look closely, you can see how much detail is packed into the tree, like the artist was obsessed with describing every single leaf. The way the light filters through the clouds and the tree creates an atmosphere of both drama and calm. It is as though the artist is thinking through nature, and how nature, like art, can protect us, and give us shelter. You see echoes of artists like Edvard Munch, who used woodcut to carve out space for modern feeling. There is a similar raw quality here, where the print becomes like a diary, a personal record of thought and emotion rendered through the process of carving and printing.