Zwemmende zwaan before 1939

Tiensje van Schoonhoven van Beurden made this print of a swan, and you can really see her hand in the making. The swan is so present! The textures that she’s carved into the block make the swan’s feathers burst with life, and the reeds have this great, rhythmic quality, dark against light, which she echoes in the water. I just love to imagine her, thinking about how to convey the softness of the feathers with these gouges, with her tools. How do you make a swan-ness appear? How do you make it float? It feels so intimate to think about the way the swan emerged through trial, error, intuition… This reminds me of other great printmakers, like Dürer, who were also in the business of making their own worlds appear through intense looking and skilled handwork. I think there's a real conversation happening, here.