Brug in Delft 1888 - 1934

Willem Adrianus Grondhout made this small etching of a bridge in Delft, using tight hatched lines to create a kind of quiet hum. Look at the way he varies the pressure of the needle to create depth and shadow. See how the dark strokes under the bridge contrast with the lighter marks on the stone. It’s a marvel how much information Grondhout conveys with so little. I'm thinking of Japanese woodblock prints and how the everyday can be made magical. The materiality here is subtle. It's on paper, of course, and the ink is a warm brown, not quite black. It makes me want to find the exact spot and compare it to now, almost one hundred years later. Art is like a conversation across time, and it's always open to interpretation. There's no single right way to see it!