Girl with a Basket 1924

Gerald Leslie Brockhurst made this etching, Girl with a Basket, sometime between 1890 and 1978. I like the way he uses the etching needle like a pencil, building up tone with close hatching marks to suggest the planes of her face and body. The materiality of the printmaking process gives it a particular feel, that smooth paper surface and the crisp lines. Look at the way the shadow behind the girl is rendered as an almost abstract block of lines, suggesting form without defining it too precisely. The etching feels direct, almost like a sketch, which is funny, because I know etching takes a lot of planning and effort. Brockhurst reminds me a little of Lucian Freud, especially in the way he captures the intensity of his sitters. Like Freud, he seems interested in the real, but also willing to embrace the ambiguity and mystery of the human form.