IJsruimen op de Amstel 1913 - 1940

Bernard Eilers made this print of the Amstel River during the ice clearance, though we don’t know exactly when. The composition is divided between light and dark—the smokey gray of the river against the darker tones of the architecture and the figures who occupy the water. The artist might have thought about the people pictured here trying to make their way through the ice on a dark, cold day. I wonder if he had to go out in that cold to make this picture, or if he was working from a photograph. Eilers printed this image rather than painting it. He must have been interested in the tonal values, and the kind of light and atmospheric conditions you can get with printmaking, maybe as a bridge between photography and painting. He was not alone in his thinking, because artists are always in conversation with one another across time, inspiring each other's creativity. They are always experimenting, aren't they?