Berglandschap met plas en ruiters 1890 - 1930

This landscape with a pool and riders is by Philip Zilcken. It’s a small etching, only about six inches high, and Zilcken coaxes so much mood out of so little. I think about him making this, dragging the etching needle across the plate, how the light catches on those tiny marks. The mountains, they look both solid and hazy. I'm drawn to the way the trees reach up, kind of wispy and uncertain. Are they trying to escape the heavy mountains? And the pool in the center, it mirrors everything, doubling the world. The riders are small figures, like us. I wonder where they are going, and what they think of the landscape. We see the world the way we are, and what we bring to it. Zilcken shows how artists teach each other to see, even across time.