Gezicht op Paleis het Loo 1907 - 1909

Simon Moulijn made this view of Paleis het Loo using etching, but when I look at it, I don’t see a building so much as a feeling. The palace sits in the middle, a series of lines, and all around it, the park stretches with trees and, above, this amazing sky. Check out the clouds. See how Moulijn gets so much dimension using only a few etched lines. It’s almost as if the sky is more important than the palace, and maybe it is. Look how wispy the etched lines are. The marks build up slowly and subtly, in layers, creating an atmosphere. The dark marks around the edges draw my eye into the landscape, a common trick used to focus your gaze. But also, this makes the palace, the supposedly main subject, just one part of a larger whole. The whole thing reminds me a little of the landscapes of Hercules Segers, an artist who worked a few centuries before Moulijn. And Segers, like Moulijn, was really interested in making prints that got at something deeper than just the surface of things.