Bebaarde man met pluimhoed 1802

Jan Chalon made this small etching, "Bearded Man with Plumed Hat," sometime in the late 18th century. Etching is an intaglio printmaking technique; the artist covers a metal plate with a waxy ground, then scratches an image into it with a needle, exposes the plate to acid, and finally prints the image from the incised lines. Look closely, and you can see how Chalon used a dense, irregular hatching to describe the textures of the man’s beard, face, and hat. This additive process is crucial to the image's overall effect, each line carefully placed to build up tone and volume. The medium itself implies a certain level of labor and skill; each plate had to be carefully prepared before any image-making could even begin. While etching was embraced by fine artists, it was also used extensively for commercial illustration and the mass production of images. In this context, it's intriguing to consider the Bearded Man as both a work of art and a product of its time, embodying the complex relationship between craft, labor, and commerce in the 18th century.