Vrouw in een slaapkamer 1892 - 1916

Rik Wouters made this delicate etching of a woman in a bedroom, we don't know exactly when, but with the help of acid, the image was bitten into a metal plate and printed on paper. Looking at the tiny, scratchy marks, I imagine Wouters bent over the plate, carefully controlling the dissolving acid, trying to capture the soft light and atmosphere of the bedroom. Was it his own? Was the woman his wife? I feel how intimate the scene is, how quiet the room. Wouters' mark-making reminds me a little of Vuillard, another painter interested in the everyday scene, but who worked a generation earlier. Painting is a conversation, you know, between artists across time. Painters like Wouters remind me that it is possible to pause time and capture a feeling in a simple gesture.