Riviergezicht 1916

This small etching, Riviergezicht, was made by Mirjam Rosa Jacobson, and it reminds us that art is a conversation. Jacobson is looking at the world and relaying it back to us through line. Jacobson coaxes the images out of the plate through the delicate rendering of the marks. Look at the way she’s described the water here; the subtle hatching, the small flicks of the wrist that somehow describe the movement of the current. She creates depth through the density of marks. The faintest touch describes the sky, while the solid darkness of the tower to the right anchors the image. The whole piece is a beautiful study in tone and texture. It reminds me a little of Whistler, someone else who thought deeply about the language of etching and its possibilities. But where Whistler’s aesthetic tended toward the ethereal and dreamlike, Jacobson seems rooted in the real, in the beauty of the everyday.