Rivierlandschap 1876

Louise Van de Kerkhove made this tiny etching of a river landscape sometime around the turn of the century. This work fits into a broader European movement of landscape art that tried to capture a sense of place and national identity. But what does it mean to translate the vastness of a landscape into such a small format? The dimensions of the etching itself make it suited to the domestic sphere, displayed on a wall or kept in a portfolio. The artist was part of a generation in Belgium that was rethinking the role of art institutions. Artists were experimenting with printmaking, in part, to make art more accessible and to challenge the elitism of the art world. To understand Van de Kerkhove's work more fully, we could look at exhibition reviews, artists' manifestos, and other examples of her prints to understand better the social and artistic networks in which she was working. In this way, the artwork can tell us something about the changing social and cultural landscape of its time.