Aan de rand van het Haagse Bos 1637 - 1692

Editor: We're looking at "Aan de rand van het Haagse Bos," or "On the Edge of the Hague Woods," an engraving from between 1637 and 1692, by Roelant Roghman. I’m really struck by how the artist uses the line work to create such varied textures. What do you see when you look at this piece? Curator: Primarily, I'm drawn to the structural relationship between the foreground and the background. Note the artist’s careful deployment of line. We might say, it guides our eyes from the dark, heavily worked earth in the front to the much lighter, airier depiction of the distant landscape. The tonal variations establish spatial depth. Editor: So it's not necessarily about *what* is depicted but *how*? Curator: Precisely. Consider how the strategically placed figures, including the person and the dogs, serve as visual anchors, mediating between the viewer’s space and the pictorial space of the engraving. These formal devices serve to deepen and enrich the overall composition. The lines used to construct clouds give off an incredible sense of temporality, in stark juxtaposition to the clear delineation used to render the more proximate foliage. What do you notice about the treatment of trees in this work? Editor: Well, there's such incredible detail in those larger trees in the mid-ground. The light seems to catch the leaves in different ways. The line work appears more energetic here. But the more distant trees appear fainter, simpler…less robust somehow? Curator: Exactly. This comparative robustness allows for a powerful emphasis on scale. It is not a matter of how a single tree has been portrayed but instead how these figures relate as part of a single image, united in space and time by Roghman’s artistic intention. Do you observe any sense of unity between them despite those contrasts? Editor: I see it in how the strong verticals of the trees’ trunks almost mirror the vertical emphasis in the figures, anchoring the landscape. This feels separate from the dynamic cloud system in the upper part of the image, yet also gives it context. Thanks so much for clarifying this for me. I had overlooked these details when focusing too closely on the subject matter! Curator: A painting or an engraving is always more than just the subject matter depicted.