Portræt af maleren Henrik Schouboe 1907

Oluf Hartmann created this portrait of the painter Henrik Schouboe with etching on a metal plate. Can you imagine the artist, bent over a copper plate, carefully dragging a needle across the surface? It's a slow, deliberate process, filled with the scratch of metal on metal, building up tone and texture. Look at those close, hatched lines that build up the face. They are almost like a kind of veil or scrim, giving the image a hazy, dreamlike quality. I wonder if Hartmann knew Schouboe well, what kind of conversations they had about art. I love the way artists portray one another. It’s an act of seeing, but also of feeling, of kinship. Each line in this print feels like an attempt to capture not just Schouboe's likeness, but something of his essence as a fellow painter. Hartmann is having a conversation with other artists. We are all feeding each other and getting ideas from each other. It's an invitation to slow down, to look closely, and to consider the many ways a single line can speak volumes.