Hoved af ældre kone og et svin 1863

Otto Haslund made this tiny etching, "Head of an Old Woman and a Pig," sometime in the 19th century. The artist used a metal plate to create it, coating the surface with a waxy, acid-resistant material, before scratching the image into this layer, and then bathing the plate in acid. Look closely, and you can see the network of fine lines, bitten into the metal to catch ink. The process yields a somewhat coarse, almost visceral quality, appropriate to the subject. The scene reflects a hardscrabble agrarian economy, where the boundary between human and animal experience is blurred. The old woman, her face etched with years of toil, seems almost twinned with the pig, a reminder of the intimate, and often difficult relationship between people and the natural world. Haslund doesn't aestheticize this relationship. The choice of etching itself, a relatively accessible printmaking method, speaks to a desire to represent everyday life, without romanticizing it. In the end, it invites us to reconsider the social realities embedded in the making and imagery, asking us to look beyond conventional notions of beauty.