Man Sitting on a Hill n.d.

Editor: Charles Jacque's etching, "Man Sitting on a Hill," has a wonderfully intimate quality. The level of detail he achieves with the etching needle is impressive. What stands out to you in this particular print? Curator: Immediately, I’m drawn to the material process of the etching itself. Consider the copper plate: the time, skill, and labor involved in biting the image into the metal with acid, each line carefully considered. How does that laborious production speak to the seemingly simple, pastoral subject matter? Is this about romanticizing rural life for an urban audience? Editor: That’s interesting – I hadn't thought about the contrast between the labor involved in creating the image versus the relaxed figure in the scene. So the means of production impacts how we read the image itself? Curator: Absolutely. The very act of reproducing this image – an etching being reproducible by its nature– and then distributing it, potentially for sale or trade, inserts it into a larger economic context. Was this image intended to ennoble labor or obscure it? Did the artist reflect their perception, or the commissioner's? Editor: That's a good question, who was the audience, what was the artist thinking about the work he was doing? This makes me see how even a seemingly simple landscape carries layers of meaning. It is an agricultural setting but one removed from direct labor, and enjoyed at leisure. The act of choosing a subject contains layers. Curator: Precisely. And think about the paper. Its own manufacture relies on materials and human effort. Where was it sourced? What were the labor practices of the papermill? Everything in art, at its most granular, relates back to materiality, labor, and economics. Editor: Wow, I’m going to look at prints completely differently now. Thank you! Curator: My pleasure. It's always about peeling back the layers of production.