The Panting Brute c. 1932

Otto August Kühler made this print, called 'The Panting Brute', and it’s a real scene of industry. I can imagine the artist down there in the train yard, squinting in the smoke and soot, his eyes following the lines of the train as he etches them into his plate. The locomotive dominates the scene, huge and powerful, but it’s made up of so many tiny lines! Look at the cross-hatching around the engine, that gives the image such depth, and a sense of heat rising off the metal. Maybe Kühler was thinking about the relationship between man and machine. There are a couple of workers there, sort of dwarfed by the size of the train. Are they in control, or are they just part of the machine themselves? Either way, there’s something heroic about the scene, and I feel that even in the inky murk there is a sense of forward progress and a celebration of power.