Rough Going 1919

Editor: "Rough Going," an etching and engraving from 1919 by Kerr Eby. It looks…well, pretty rough! The dark, scratchy lines give it a sense of struggle, of beasts and men just trying to make their way through something awful. What stands out to you most about this piece? Curator: It pulls me in, doesn’t it? Those lines you mention—they vibrate with tension. It's like looking at a memory, slightly out of focus, the important bits seared into the mind. And it makes you wonder what 'rough going' *really* means here, doesn’t it? It’s about the physical mud, yes, but it’s so much more. Editor: In what way? I'm seeing the war context from the date. Curator: Precisely! Eby was a war artist. These men, these horses, they’re not just moving supplies. They're carrying the weight of a world at war. See how the lines in the foreground almost claw at the viewer? That's the clinging mud, but also, I think, the clinging trauma. Did you notice that skeletal trees are looming in the midground and background? They are not particularly obvious as one focuses on the foregrounded action. Editor: I didn’t! So, the landscape itself is almost a character? Curator: Absolutely. It’s a silent witness, a testament to devastation. And Eby doesn’t give us any grand heroics. Just the grim determination to keep moving, one step at a time. And consider how Eby manages to generate the drama in a near monochrome palette with subtle, yet highly evocative, use of shading. I always feel an existential resonance when I view this work. Do you find that interesting, as a counterpoint to any narrative interpretations? Editor: Definitely! I initially just saw the surface-level image, but now I appreciate the deeper layers of meaning embedded in the composition itself. Curator: Isn't it incredible how a few lines can speak volumes? Editor: Totally. I see the "rough going" now on so many levels!