Portret van Charles-Louis-Joseph-Xavier de la Vallée Poussin before 1903

This is a portrait of Charles-Louis-Joseph-Xavier de la Vallée Poussin, printed anonymously in a book of some kind, maybe geology, who knows. Look at how the grey tones just build up to describe his face and suit. I imagine the person who made this, maybe an engraver, had to be really careful, building up the image bit by bit. They probably felt a lot of pressure to get it right. Look at his moustache; it’s a bit like a wave. It sits there, a solid form made of the same tonal stuff as his face but it's lighter, like a cloud or a memory. It’s a pretty formal portrait but that moustache has a touch of the absurd. I like to think about how different artists working at the same time, even in totally different fields, are always in conversation. They're all drawing from the same well of ideas. Each mark that the artist makes helps us to see the world in a different way.