Landschap met molen in de Binckhorst in Den Haag 1916

Willem Adrianus Grondhout made this small etching of the Binckhorst windmill in Den Haag. It's all done in these scratchy dark lines, like he's digging into the plate, searching for the light, trying to coax the image out. I'm imagining him out there, maybe it's cold, the trees are bare, and he's just trying to capture something fleeting, the way the light hits the water, the way the mill stands against the sky. There's a real sense of atmosphere in this little thing, like you can feel the dampness in the air. He's not trying to give you a perfect picture, just a feeling, a sense of place. That building over to the left, the way it dissolves into the landscape, is how I sometimes feel as a painter. It connects with the wider tradition of landscape painting, where artists are always trying to capture something elusive, something beyond just what's in front of them. Painting is always a conversation, right?