The Seine at the Mouth of the Canal Saint-Martin 1904

Auguste-Louis Lepère made this etching of the Seine at the Mouth of the Canal Saint-Martin, using a range of closely hatched and cross-hatched lines to define a complex scene. It's all about the process here, you can see the accumulation of marks, the way one thing builds upon another. Looking at this piece, it's the surface that gets me. The whole thing is made up of these tiny, precise lines, all working together to create a sense of depth and texture. It's almost like he's building the scene up from scratch, one mark at a time. The dense hatching in the foreground really gives a sense of the gritty, worn surfaces of the canal bank, and then, further back, those thin, wispy lines suggest the hazy atmosphere of the city beyond. It puts me in mind of Whistler, but Lepère is maybe a bit more down-to-earth. Ultimately, it's a reminder that art is an ongoing conversation, a process of building on what's come before, and of always pushing the boundaries of what's possible. And who knows what the next mark will bring?