Landscape with Lake and Mountains 1919

James N. Rosenberg made this lithograph of a "Landscape with Lake and Mountains" in 1919 and then reworked it in 1959. I imagine Rosenberg hunched over the lithographic stone, charcoal in hand, smudging and shading. It’s an exercise in tone, a dance of darks and lights, all in the service of capturing the bulk of mountains mirrored in water. You can almost feel the soft give of the charcoal, how it crumbles just so, leaving a trace of the artist's hand. Look at how the peaks are rendered. They are not simply shapes but built up with a flurry of marks, almost like a shorthand for the ruggedness of the terrain. He captures something essential about landscape—the way it looms, the way it reflects. It reminds me of other artists interested in the abstract qualities of landscape, like Dove and Hartley, who found ways to express the spirit of a place. The interesting thing about Rosenberg reworking it so much later suggests he felt he had something to add or perhaps simply wanted to revisit a familiar space, and what could be better than that?