Landweg door landschap met heuvels aan de horizon 1867 - 1935

Maurits van der Valk created this etching, titled "Landweg door landschap met heuvels aan de horizon," or "Country Road Through Landscape with Hills on the Horizon" in the late 19th or early 20th century. It depicts a rural scene in the Netherlands, a country where landscape has long been a dominant theme in art. The composition invites us along this road, but who is invited and how? The road seems to be recently disturbed for harvest. This is likely shortly after the industrial revolution where some landowners had begun to adopt new technologies and farming practices, leading to increased productivity, but also displacement of rural communities. The vast openness of the land, rendered in delicate lines, can be read not just as a celebration of the Dutch countryside, but also as a reflection on changing social and economic structures, particularly on how the country was being reshaped by modernization. To fully understand this etching, we can look into land use and social reform movements of the period. Such research enriches our understanding of art as a product of its time, deeply interwoven with social and institutional histories.