Strandgezicht met boten op het strand en in de zee 1890 - 1930

Here is a beach scene with boats on the sand and in the sea, made with etching by Philip Zilcken. Zilcken must have used a needle to draw into a waxy ground on a metal plate; it's a bit like drawing but with a lot more physical resistance. I can imagine him working on the plate—how he would have needed to keep his marks light and open and how he might have been thinking about the etching needle as a kind of extended hand. Look at the single figure beside the boat. Zilcken must have been thinking about tonal variation and how to create a feeling of light, which he achieves with his sparing marks. It reminds me of other Dutch landscape artists like Hendrik Willem Mesdag, and you can tell these artists are in conversation with each other. Painting, like writing, or music, is all about call and response—a deep, ongoing exchange of ideas. We can all be part of that conversation!