Landschap met huizen en water met aangemeerde zeilboten 1867 - 1935

This is Maurits van der Valk's etching of a landscape with houses, water, and docked sailboats, made sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. I love how he's captured the scene with such sparse, delicate lines. You can really see the process, the way he's built up the image bit by bit. Look at the lower left corner, at the mass of tangled lines that form the bank. There is something quite raw and immediate in the handling of the mark making. It’s like van der Valk is feeling his way through the image, allowing the etching needle to dance across the plate almost on its own. The whole thing reminds me a little of Whistler's etchings, that same love for capturing a sense of place with a minimum of fuss. But where Whistler is all about atmosphere and light, van der Valk seems more interested in the nuts and bolts of the landscape itself. Ultimately, this embrace of ambiguity is what makes art so endlessly fascinating.