River valles in the mountains 

Franz Kobell rendered this landscape, titled River Valley in the Mountains, with pen and ink. Look closely, and you'll see how he built up the image through careful cross-hatching. The overall effect relies on linear precision. The labor involved in producing this drawing is considerable, with countless tiny marks coming together to create texture, depth, and light. Yet, there is also a sense of freedom in the artist's hand, a kind of easy elegance in the mark-making. This drawing would have been made for display, part of a much larger economy of image production. Landscape scenes were highly sought after by collectors, part of the leisure culture of the rising middle class. The simple materials of paper and ink don't detract from the complex interplay between nature, culture, and labor that this drawing performs. In fact, they highlight it. Kobell invites us to consider how even a seemingly straightforward landscape is actually the result of a whole network of human relations.