Etser aan het werk after 1867

Curator: "Etser aan het werk"—"Etcher at Work"—created after 1867. What strikes you immediately about this etching, hanging here at the Rijksmuseum? Editor: It feels so enclosed. All those layers of shadow, trapping the etcher within his own meticulous process. A bowl in the foreground and lots of intriguing gear on the table – it gives a nice spatial separation in what is a largely tonal work. Curator: Indeed, there's a beautiful stillness about it, don't you think? Knowing it's by Charles Courtry offers a little insight. This was a period where academic art embraced genre painting and portraiture together, blurring the line between them to some degree. Editor: Speaking of which, the labor implied! Think about the copper plate, the acid baths, the hours hunched over, correcting, refining. Etching requires such intense discipline; it speaks to a world where art-making was also very hard work. There’s a large window behind the artist, offering much light, to perform the precise labour of fine etching. Curator: Absolutely. The intaglio process, pushing the ink into the grooves of the plate...it is an incredible marriage of artistry and technique. One that gives, I feel, its unique power to hold emotion. Courtry must've felt intensely alive as he observed someone engaged in that creative trance, right? Editor: And did you notice the wallpaper behind the table? I wonder if that backdrop was simply "stock" material to signal bourgeois domesticity, or if it hints at some aspiration on the artist's behalf, maybe something tied to status through labour... Curator: Hmmm... Food for thought, indeed! Maybe Courtry, who moved within circles that included Manet and Baudelaire, wanted to underscore that very material groundedness of creativity as part of that bohemian vision? Editor: Or, was the creative process a commodified product back then already! Anyway...seeing this print now, I can appreciate the process so much more by seeing the amount of time one must’ve committed to perfecting etching. Curator: Looking closely at this etching reminds me how much devotion used to be integral to the art world! Editor: Yes! Thank you for drawing attention to this artist and his devotion.