Oxfordshire 1906

Muirhead Bone made this etching, called Oxfordshire, on a plate sometime around the turn of the century. It’s made of all these tiny little marks, which is how you get that overall impression, almost like a faded memory. There’s a stillness here, an attention to capturing a moment. Look at the surface of the water, how it reflects the light, and all those little hatch marks create a real sense of depth. There's a really lovely scratching on the left, in the trees, a mass of tiny marks, that's where my eye keeps going back to. You can see how Whistler was a huge influence, that sensibility of capturing the light and atmosphere in a fleeting moment. You can really see Bone’s commitment to etching as a process, almost like a form of meditation. It's not just about the image but about the doing.