Mine Sweepers and Seaplanes 1919

Arthur Lismer’s etching, Mine Sweepers and Seaplanes, is a flurry of marks. He's not trying to hide the process; you can almost see him working, hatching away with his needle to create this dramatic scene. There's so much texture here. Look at the way he's built up the sky with these tiny, nervous lines – it gives it this incredible sense of depth, like you could almost reach out and touch the clouds. And then there’s the water, all choppy and agitated, mirroring the tension in the sky. My eye keeps going back to the cluster of ships, a line of vertical strokes on the horizon, this little pocket of activity that anchors the whole composition. Lismer almost anticipates Gerhard Richter. Like Richter's blurred photographs, this is a record of something, but it’s also so much more than that. It's about the feeling of being there, of witnessing this moment in time and the sense of the sublime.