Val de Travers c. 18th century

Curator: This is Salomon Gessner’s "Val de Travers," a landscape etching, created sometime before his death in 1788. What strikes you about its composition? Editor: It feels both grand and a little claustrophobic. The mountains loom, but the limited tonal range flattens the space somehow. Curator: The hatching and cross-hatching indeed create texture, but the lack of a full tonal spectrum does flatten depth, reducing the sublime to surface. Editor: Still, there's a realness. You can practically feel the chill of the rocks and the dampness of the soil. Curator: The artist’s focus on line and detail, the structural elements of the landscape, evoke a sense of place, even if idealized. Editor: Maybe that compression actually works. It's like nature is pressing in, reminding us we’re just tiny specks. Curator: A compelling, if unsettling, interpretation, emphasizing our existential insignificance within a structured natural order. Editor: Well, the etching gave me something to think about, anyway. Curator: Precisely. It is in the careful observation of form and its contextual understanding that true meaning is revealed.