A Road in the Marche 1911

Muirhead Bone made this etching, A Road in the Marche, using fine lines to capture the light and landscape. It’s all about the process of mark-making here, a real conversation with the plate! Look at the road, see how it’s rendered with these delicate, almost scratchy lines? And then those cypress trees reaching up, made with the same language. It’s like he’s feeling his way through the scene, letting the needle dance across the metal. The texture in the foreground is really interesting, a dense cluster of marks that give way to the smoother, more open sky. It reminds me a little of Whistler’s etchings, that same sense of atmosphere and quiet observation, although Bone is doing his own thing, of course. It’s all about how artists speak to each other across time, isn't it?