Treurende figuren bij een gewonde man in een landschap 1811

This etching, ‘Mourning figures by a wounded man in a landscape’ was made by Willem van Senus. We don’t know exactly when, but he was active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Etching is a printmaking technique that uses acid to produce a design in a metal plate. The plate would have been coated in wax, and then the artist would scratch through the wax to expose the metal. When the plate is dipped in acid, the exposed metal is eaten away, creating lines. The plate is then inked and printed onto paper. Notice how the etched lines create delicate details in the figures' drapery. The process is labor intensive, requiring skill and precision to create the image. In the social context of the time, printmaking served as a means of reproducing images for wider distribution, democratizing art, and knowledge production. Yet, consider the labor behind each print, the skilled hands that transferred images, narratives, and emotions onto paper.