Koeien in een stal 1867 - 1935

Maurits van der Valk made this etching, Koeien in een stal, sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century. It’s a dance of dark and light, where the artist coaxes a world from a metal plate with only line. Look at how he renders the cows: the way he uses closely-packed, almost frantic strokes to give the impression of their hulking forms in a dimly lit stall. It’s like he’s sketching with shadows, a real testament to the power of suggestion. The lines aren't just descriptive; they’re emotional, giving us the weight and warmth of these animals, while evoking a sense of enclosure. Think about the history of etching - it's a process of repeated action, the slow layering up of the image bit by bit. You see this commitment to the process, almost the intimacy, in other Dutch artists like Rembrandt, who were masters of pulling depth and atmosphere from simple marks. The beauty is in the suggestive, not the declarative.