Landschap met water 1890

Curator: Right now, we are looking at "Landschap met water", or "Landscape with Water", an etching by Floris Verster dating to 1890 and housed here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: Instantly, there's a wistful melancholy in the scene. A sketch of windswept serenity, that's slightly faded with the passage of time... Almost ghostlike in its subtle shading and scratchy lines. It reminds me of remembering a favorite dream. Curator: As an etching, it reveals a whole laborious process--the wax resist applied, the precise incising of lines into the metal plate. Each scratch is evidence of careful craft. You see how these individual strokes define not only form, but also texture--rendering water, rock, and sky? Editor: Yes, it is textural. And how stark, almost minimalist. Did you notice the sailboat barely discernible on the horizon? Or, are those just whimsical birds out on a promenade? It is beautifully ambiguous, but not in a frustrating way! There’s beauty in the quiet constraint of the work. Curator: These constraints of etching shaped not just the technique but, ultimately, its broader reception. Verster carefully utilizes etching, and printmaking in general, allowing art to become more accessible to a wider public, escaping elitist consumption, but allowing his landscape to enter ordinary homes. Editor: It becomes more precious because of that, perhaps? That multiple could carry, in its own humble fashion, the soul of a moment? And I suppose that Verster, even in the small and quiet piece, is not trying to capture grand scenery, but a feeling, a sliver of his life in nature, with all its rough edges visible. Curator: Indeed! By employing etching, Verster opens avenues to explore democratic forms of art. "Landschap met water", rather than depicting some monumental, sublime landscape, portrays a simple, personal one. The material conditions allow us to reconsider traditional, elitist notions associated with "high art". Editor: Thinking about it, there is profound power when you consider something so handmade can be replicated! And shared across countless spaces. Now I look upon this again with renewed sense of reverence. Thanks for pulling my head around, quite literally!