Leeds Warehouses 1905

Muirhead Bone etched “Leeds Warehouses,” somewhere around the early 20th century, and the scene feels like a city holding its breath. Just look at how he’s built up the image with all those tiny, nervous lines, like he’s trying to capture not just the buildings, but the very air around them. You can almost feel the weight of the stone, the dampness of the canal. It reminds me a bit of Piranesi, all that architectural drama, but with a touch of northern grit. I wonder what Bone was thinking as he scratched away at that plate? Was he trying to romanticize the industrial age, or was he just drawn to the sheer, imposing scale of it all? Either way, he’s created a world that feels both solid and strangely fragile.