En vej 1935

Henry Nielsen made this etching, En vej, whose title translates as ‘One Road’, at an unknown date with ink on paper. Imagine him there in the studio, the acid biting into the plate, the smell of ink in the air. The road’s perspective rushes quickly back, meeting in the middle distance under a sky etched with soft rain. Nielsen renders figures along the side of the road in such quick, abbreviated marks – scratch, scratch, scratch – with the buildings and telegraph poles in the background looming up to meet the low sky. It’s all in such high contrast, with an incredible tonal range, that he achieves by varying the pressure and density of marks. There’s a beautiful tension here between the graphic quality of the etching and the sense of the artist’s hand at work, as well as the feeling of a specific place and weather. I find it reminiscent of the early work of the American artist, Edward Hopper, where the everyday is made beautiful by the attentiveness of observation.