Knotwilg voor hek before 1939

Pally van Schoonhoven van Beurden made this etching called ‘Knotwilg voor hek’ with some metal plate and acid, we don't know exactly when. Look at the way the lines are laid down, so loose and free, like a sketch in a notebook. You can almost see the artist thinking, changing their mind. The texture feels scratchy, immediate, the lines varying in depth and weight. You can see the plate marks around the edges where the metal was pressed to the paper. It’s not trying to hide anything, it's upfront about being a print. The way the tree trunk is rendered, with those close-packed, almost scribbled lines, makes it feel both solid and a little unstable. It reminds me a bit of some of the landscape etchings by Hercules Segers – that same love of the humble, the everyday. Both artists seemed to embrace experimentation. Ultimately, it's this sense of play, of not quite knowing what will happen, that makes art so exciting, isn't it?