View on a Canal in Winter c. 19th century

Editor: Here we see François Auguste Trichon's "View on a Canal in Winter", a print from the Harvard Art Museums collection. It’s a busy scene of people on a frozen canal. What stands out to you about it? Curator: I am drawn to the printmaking process itself. The material reality of the engraver's labor, how the artist transformed a scene into reproducible marks, and how that made the image accessible for consumption interests me. Editor: So you're less focused on the picturesque winter scene and more on how it was made and distributed? Curator: Precisely. Consider the social context: prints facilitated wider circulation of images, influencing taste and even social values. It begs the question, who could afford prints like this and what message did they take away? Editor: That gives me a lot to consider about the wider implications of printmaking. Thanks!