Landschap met een boerderij aan een vijver before 1902

This photogravure by Hermann Linck captures a landscape with a farm by a pond, and it seems to have been created with a real eye for tone. The light and shadow create a kind of dance across the image, pulling you in and out of focus. There is a definite sense of the artist responding to the scene, rather than just replicating it. The sky looks stormy and full of energy; the water is still and flat, but there's a movement, too, in the suggestion of reflections and light. The farmhouse and its reflection are smack bang in the middle of the work, as if the image pivots from the still point of this quiet building. I'm reminded of the prints of Käthe Kollwitz, although her subject matter was often quite different. Like Kollwitz, Linck seems interested in how the emotional and the political can be felt through the land. Art is such an ongoing conversation – isn't it great?