Boer en boerin met kind voor een huis 1776 - 1815

This etching, "Boer en boerin met kind voor een huis" or "Farmer and Wife with Child in Front of a House", was made by Marie Lambertine Coclers in the late 18th or early 19th century, using a copper plate. The image's graphic quality is owed to Coclers’ command of the etching process. To create this print, she would have coated a copper plate with wax, and then drawn through it with a sharp needle, exposing the metal. The plate was then submerged in acid, which bit into the lines. By repeating this process, Coclers would have achieved the different depths of line we see here, from the delicate shading on the figures’ faces to the bold outlines of the architecture. Prints like this one were relatively inexpensive and easy to produce in multiples, and were extremely popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Coclers has captured a scene of intimate domesticity, made accessible to a wide audience through the ingenious technology of the printing press. It’s a reminder that even the most seemingly straightforward image is the product of considerable craft and ingenuity.