The Meeting under the Arch 1910

Jean-Louis Forain made this etching of a meeting under an arch. Look at the cross hatching! It's like he's building up the figures and the archway with tiny little scratches. It's such a physical process, you can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the plate. The whole thing is so delicate, like it could disappear at any moment. The figures are shadowy and indistinct. I love how the archway looms over them, creating this sense of enclosure and mystery. Notice how the lines of the arch are so direct and solid, yet the bodies are suggested rather than defined. It reminds me a bit of Daumier, who was also great at capturing the everyday dramas of Parisian life. But Forain has his own thing going on, this way of using line to create atmosphere. Art is just this big conversation, one artist talking to another across time. We're all just trying to figure things out, one mark at a time.