Gammel by 1751 - 1828

Johan Bulow created this etching titled ‘Gammel by’, its dimensions 105 by 155 millimeters, sometime before his death in 1828. The primary visual experience is the stark contrast between the detailed architectural rendering and the textured sky achieved through dense, varied hatching. This contrast evokes a sense of drama, a kind of sublime unease through the tension of light and shadow. The composition emphasizes the decaying structure of a fortress, highlighting its material presence through precise linework. This contrasts with the fluidity of the sky. The lines are a semiotic system, a set of signs, where each stroke contributes to the overall structure. The image, with its crumbling stone and imposing towers, becomes a meditation on time, decay, and the transience of human structures against the timeless backdrop of nature. Notice how the hatching defines form and space. The hatching creates a formal quality functioning as part of a larger discourse on the relationship between man-made structures and the natural world.