Pijprokende man in een schuur 1836 - 1886

Hendrik Jacobus Scholten created this etching, ‘Pijprokende man in een schuur’ – ‘Man Smoking a Pipe in a Barn’ – using a metal plate to capture a humble scene. Look closely, and you'll notice how the etched lines vary in thickness and density. This is the etcher’s art – controlling the depth of the lines to create contrast, texture, and tone. The artist would have coated the plate with a waxy, acid-resistant ground, then scratched into it with a needle, exposing the metal. Immersing the plate in acid would bite away at these exposed lines, creating grooves to hold ink. This process, a printmaking technique accessible to many artists, results in a print characterized by a level of detail. You can see this in the way that Scholten suggests the play of light and shadow within the interior. The choice of such a quotidian scene – a man at rest, perhaps a farmer – and the very reproducible nature of the medium itself, speaks to the democratizing impulse of printmaking. It invites us to appreciate the artistry in the everyday.