Boomtoppen c. 1944 - 1990

Kees Stoop made this etching called ‘Boomtoppen,’ which means ‘treetops’ in Dutch, sometime in the 20th century. The whole thing is etched in a really tight, busy way with so many tiny, tiny marks, like a million little scratches all working together. Up close, you can see how Stoop uses these tiny lines to build up the textures of the trees. Look at the way the lines clump together in the shadows and then spread out to let the light through. See that dark, solid evergreen on the right? It’s like a dark mass, and then next to it you have this almost skeletal tree with all these wiry branches, so delicate and airy. It reminds me a little of some of Whistler’s etchings, where he's also using these fine lines to capture the feeling of a place. But Stoop has his own way of doing things. It’s less about capturing the light and more about getting lost in the details. It makes you want to get closer and closer, to see how all those little marks add up to something so much bigger.