Landschap met brug 1872 - 1932

This small etching of a Landscape with Bridge was made by Frans Smissaert in the Netherlands. The process looks pretty direct. You can almost feel him dragging the etching needle across the plate, each line building up a dense atmosphere. Look at the way Smissaert uses these marks to create texture. The lines are raw and unpolished but there’s a real sense of the landscape. It’s kind of melancholic, right? Notice the way the lines in the foreground are all going in the same direction, really close together. It almost feels like you could reach out and touch the grassy bank of the river. It’s so material. Smissaert reminds me of Whistler, who was interested in the atmospheric qualities of landscape. Like Whistler, he shows us that artmaking is about feeling your way through a process, rather than trying to get to some finished endpoint. There are no fixed meanings, just different ways of seeing.