Verona 1932

This is an etching called Verona by Willem Adrianus Grondhout. Look at how the lines, the basic units of drawing, build the whole picture. There’s a buzz of activity created by the hatching. It feels like a quick sketch, immediate and full of life, but the details of the architecture suggest it’s also been carefully considered. The texture feels almost crusty, built up through tiny bites of the plate, like the surface of an old stone building. There's a limited palette of browns, adding to a sense of timelessness. Focusing on the people gathered under the umbrellas, there's a sense of movement and energy in those scribbled forms. It almost looks like a photograph that’s slightly out of focus, capturing a moment in time but also slightly abstracted, like a memory. Grondhout seems to be influenced by artists like James McNeill Whistler, who were masters of capturing a sense of place through atmosphere and suggestion rather than precise detail. It's a reminder that art is often more about feeling than seeing.