Golden Cornice, No.II 1915

Joseph Pennell made this etching, Golden Cornice, No.II, with incredible detail using only thin lines on a plate. I can just imagine Pennell walking around New York and deciding to make this artwork. I wonder what the city was like in the late 1800s, early 1900s? To make an etching, the artist has to be pretty skilled, and precise. One wrong move and you've messed up the plate, and it can be hard to fix. The cornices must have caught his eye, I wonder if he thought of them like brushstrokes in the sky? There is something kind of muscular and energetic about the hatching marks, they give a real sense of place. Painters are always in dialogue with each other, and with the world around them. Every mark we make is a response to something, an echo of something else. Like a musician with notes, the vocabulary of marks and lines are a language.