Zomeruitvoering Groote Kerk te Naarden (...) Zaterdagavond 28 juni half Acht (...) 1913

Egbert Rubertus Derk Schaap made this monochromatic print, sometime around the late 19th or early 20th century. It’s an etching, so he would have been using a needle to scratch into a metal plate, a fairly physical process, and then bathing the plate in acid to eat away the lines. You get a real sense of this hands-on method in the final image. The lines feel raw and immediate, like Schaap was thinking aloud as he worked. Look at the way he renders the horse, it's all cross hatching and frantic scribbles, but somehow it creates this incredible sense of mass and texture. The whole scene feels like a dream, a knight and a hooded figure in a dark forest. It reminds me of Goya, or maybe even some of the darker comics of the 1980s. It is a reminder that art doesn’t always have to be polished or perfect, sometimes the messiness is where the magic happens.