Geiten 1636 - 1705

This tiny print, titled "Geiten" – that’s goats in Dutch – was made anonymously, using the technique of etching. The artist scratched lines into a wax-coated metal plate, and acid then bit into the exposed areas. Look closely and you’ll notice the freehand, almost casual quality to the lines. This speaks to the appeal of the etching process, which allowed artists to quickly translate their ideas to paper. Unlike engraving, which demands great muscular force to incise lines, etching offered a more spontaneous and painterly effect. And that aesthetic is certainly on display here: the animals have a shaggy, energetic quality, heightened by the hatching lines of the printmaker. This approach would have been appreciated by collectors, who valued the artist’s touch, even in a relatively mass-produced medium like printmaking. The image would have circulated widely, bringing the pastoral scene to a broad audience. The very act of bringing such images into being was part of the popularization of the natural world, especially in contrast to the increasing urbanization of the Netherlands at the time.