La Porte Gayole, Boulogne-sur-Mer 1902

Donald Shaw MacLaughlan created this etching of La Porte Gayole, in Boulogne-sur-Mer. It’s a tightly worked plate. You can sense the artist building the image from a swarm of tiny, agitated marks, clustered together to give a sense of the weight and mass of the architecture. I can imagine MacLaughlan working on this plate, his hand moving back and forth, slowly building up the image bit by bit. Each mark is a decision, a small act of creation. It’s almost like he’s caressing the surface of the metal, coaxing the image into being. I’m drawn to the way he’s captured the light here, the way it dapples across the stones and the street. It makes you think about other artists making tonal etchings at this time, like Whistler and the American expatriates in Europe. They are all working within a shared language of mark-making, yet each brings their own unique voice and vision to the process. It’s a constant conversation, an exchange of ideas across time.