Schepen aan land bij de kust 1875 - 1909

Editor: This is "Schepen aan land bij de kust" – or "Ships Ashore by the Coast," an etching by E. Dufuissaux, created sometime between 1875 and 1909. It has a slightly melancholy feeling to it, the dark lines and rough texture evoke a sense of hard work and precariousness of life at sea. What stands out to you? Curator: Considering this etching through a materialist lens, I find myself drawn to the laborious process involved in its creation. Etching demands a specific set of skills and materials: the copper plate, the acid, the press. This print gives us insight into 19th-century printmaking and how that shaped the artist’s ability to reproduce images widely. What impact would these kinds of scenes have had on popular culture? Editor: That's an interesting way to look at it. I hadn’t considered the means of production influencing the art’s cultural impact. Curator: Absolutely. The accessibility of prints democratized art, allowing for broader consumption of images and ideas. The rough, almost industrial, aesthetic created by the etching process seems fitting for a subject matter that would often depend on manual labor for its subject matter, don’t you think? The print becomes less about idealization and more about presenting a certain starkness in life. How does it compare with painting in that way? Editor: That’s a good point. Paintings of the time are certainly aiming for the romantic and dramatic. I’d not realized how much that choice of method dictated what this work *means*. It is as though the method has informed how we need to read it. Curator: Precisely! By understanding the materials and the production process, we can decode the social and cultural values embedded in the artwork, like this representation of labor and industry by the sea. Editor: It’s fascinating to think about art history this way. Thanks! Curator: My pleasure. There’s a whole world that opens when we center materiality.