Ooievaar aan een oever 1929

Lodewijk Schelfhout made this etching of a stork on a shore sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. Its delicate lines and careful composition reveal an artist working within a tradition of landscape art, but also engaging with modern printmaking techniques. Schelfhout was a Dutch artist who lived through a period of immense social and political change. In the Netherlands at this time, artists were faced with a choice: either continue to depict the world in traditional ways, or engage with the new forms of abstraction and expressionism that were emerging elsewhere in Europe. Here, Schelfhout seems to be attempting a balance. The stork is rendered with a realism reminiscent of earlier nature studies, but the stark contrast between light and shadow, and the simplified background, hints at the influence of modernism. As historians, we can look to period writings, exhibition reviews, and the artist’s biography to understand the competing pressures Schelfhout faced and the choices he made in this work. The meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.