Gewässer, links vier Fischer 

This landscape with four fisherman was drawn by Franz Kobell, sometime in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, using pen and brown ink on paper. It's a fairly conventional approach, using traditional materials. But look closely, and you’ll see a rather interesting relationship between the medium and the scene represented. The sharp, linear quality of the ink is perfect for rendering the craggy rocks and dense foliage that dominate the composition. Kobell's technique of hatching and cross-hatching not only creates depth and shadow, but also mimics the textures of the natural world, almost as if the landscape itself is being inscribed onto the paper. It's fascinating to consider how the labor of the artist—the repetitive, painstaking strokes of the pen—mirror the labor of the fishermen depicted in the scene. Both are engaged in a kind of extraction, one from the natural world, the other from the artistic process. This reminds us that art-making itself is a form of work, deeply intertwined with the social and economic realities of its time.