The Thicket 1846

Editor: This is Charles Jacque’s "The Thicket," created in 1846. It’s an etching, so a print. It feels so immediate, almost like a sketch. How should we approach it? Curator: Let's consider the labor and materiality involved. Etchings, unlike direct drawings, require a matrix, acid, specific papers. How does that production process impact its accessibility and value as an object in 1846, when compared, say, to painting? Editor: Right, prints could be reproduced, so more people could own them. How does the landscape genre fit into this mass production and consumption? Curator: Think about what’s being depicted. A “thicket” suggests untamed nature, yet it's neatly framed, printed, and commodified for bourgeois consumption. Are we celebrating untouched nature, or consuming its image, appropriating a landscape even then under pressure? Consider how fences divide, and delineate public from private… Editor: So, the artwork highlights a growing disconnect, even in the 19th century, between people and their environment due to industrial advancements? The etching process becomes almost like an early form of mass media, mediating our relationship with nature? Curator: Precisely. The very act of etching, the specific inks and papers used, speaks to industrialization and the artist's place within a market structure. Even romanticism couldn't escape the demands of production. How does the labor involved inform or conflict with ideas of leisure? Editor: I hadn't thought about it that way before, but it does frame a more nuanced message. It moves beyond just a pretty landscape. I will definitely view other etchings differently, now. Curator: Understanding art’s material processes and the conditions of its making are critical for interpretation, precisely for expanding beyond that idea of beauty.