New South Ferry 1904

Charles Frederick William Mielatz made this etching, New South Ferry, with a real appetite for the grit of urban life. I can imagine him standing there, squinting in the waterfront light, and moving the etching needle, mark by mark, on the plate. You can feel the artist observing how forms overlap, like the rigging of the ship against the skyline, and he captures a kind of poetic grime. Look how the reflections shimmer in the water, all those tiny, flickering marks. He's not trying to pretty things up; there's a real sense of place and time. I love how Mielatz makes the ferry almost loom out of the fog, this dark shape pushing forward, as if it were alive. It makes me think of Whistler's prints. And like him, Mielatz is part of that tradition of artists who find beauty in the everyday, in the working world. They remind us to look closely.