Hondenmarkt before 1909

Florimond Buyck’s “Hondenmarkt” is an etching that captures a moment, maybe a mundane one, with a gentle hand. The tonal range in the piece is narrow, built up with tiny, deliberate marks. You can feel Buyck thinking through the process, letting the image emerge bit by bit. Look at the area around the dogs, the way the ground is described with these short, almost hesitant lines. There’s a real tenderness in how Buyck renders these animals and their owners, as if he's trying to capture a feeling more than a photographic likeness. The textures are palpable. You can almost feel the scruff of the dogs’ fur, the roughhewn wood of the fence. It reminds me a bit of Félix Vallotton, not in style, but in the quiet intensity of everyday life. Like Vallotton, Buyck is showing us that even the most ordinary scenes can hold a certain beauty, and that art is as much about seeing as it is about feeling. It's not about grand gestures, but small observations.