Portret van een onbekende Engelse vrouw before 1912

This is a portrait of an unknown English woman, made by Léon Lowenberg. It’s an etching, so its all about mark making, using thousands of tiny lines to build up the image. Look at the way Lowenberg creates light and shadow. It’s all about the density and direction of these etched lines. You can almost feel the texture of the paper, the way the ink sits on the surface. See how he uses a denser concentration of marks to create the shadow on the left side of her face, versus the lighter lines on her cheek, giving a sense of roundness and volume? And that hat! The lace is rendered with such delicate precision, each tiny hole and frill described with an incredible economy of line. It makes me think of Whistler, with that same sense of quiet elegance and subtle tonal variation. It’s a real tour-de-force of etching, reminding us that the simplest means can often be the most effective.