After the Seizure 1908

Jean-Louis Forain made this print ‘After the Seizure’ sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century using etching. The scene is rendered with so much scratchy energy. You can almost feel the quick, decisive marks of the needle on the plate, carving out figures hunched with exhaustion and despair. The emotional weight, it’s all there in the web of lines that define the family and their surroundings. I imagine Forain, observing this family, trying to capture their plight with empathy and immediacy. What’s so beautiful and terrible about this image is the way it uses a kind of shorthand to convey a world of feeling. It’s like he’s saying, ‘Look, this is what it feels like,’ trusting the viewer to fill in the rest. In a way, we are all etching away at the world, trying to make sense of it. It’s an ongoing dialogue between the artist, the medium, and us.