Winter, St. Ives, Cornwall c. 1895 - 1910

Richard Hayley Lever made this etching, Winter, St. Ives, Cornwall, using a metal plate and acid to bite those moody lines into the surface. It’s all about the process, isn’t it? The way the artist coaxes the image out of the material. Look at how the tiny marks build up to describe those buildings! There’s a real density of tone, almost like you could reach out and feel the rough stone. And then, the way the sails are rendered with these quick, almost scribbled lines – you can feel the wind and the movement. That dark boat in the foreground is built up of so many lines it appears almost solid in the murky light. It reminds me a little of Whistler’s etchings, that same kind of atmospheric stillness. But Lever brings something else, a sense of place, of being right there on that windswept beach. Art is never really finished anyway, is it? It's just a conversation, a continuation of ideas that keep bouncing around.