Regendag te Venetië 1920

Philip Zilcken made this etching, Regendag te Venetië, sometime in his life, with a whole lot of cross-hatched lines. I can imagine him, bent over the plate, scratching away, trying to capture that watery light, the way the rain blurs everything in Venice. It's all in shades of grey. Look at how he's built up the texture of the buildings, those soft, dissolving edges. The lines are so close together; you can almost feel the dampness in the air. I can imagine Zilcken thinking about Whistler, about mood, about how to make a print sing with atmosphere. The gondola sits there, quiet and still, like it's waiting for the rain to stop, for the world to come back into focus. What was he thinking when he made those scratches? It’s lovely when an artist captures a moment like that, a fleeting feeling, and turns it into something solid, something we can all share.