Prøveplade: Fem hoveder 1899

Editor: So, this is *Prøveplade: Fem hoveder*, or 'Test Sheet: Five Heads', an etching by Frans Schwartz from 1899. It's really striking, almost haunting, to see these faces clustered together. What jumps out at you when you look at it? Curator: What do I see? Five captured moods, floating in a sea of possibility, really! It's like Schwartz was exploring the nuances of human expression, etching not just faces, but fleeting emotional states onto the plate. He probably played with crosshatching and different line weights, right? Almost like a visual experiment to see which one would create the desired effect. And that isolated head at the bottom seems very somber and contemplative… Almost like it contains the other ones! What about you? Editor: Yeah, that's really perceptive. It does feel like a testing ground for different ways to capture emotion. What makes the bottom one stand out from the others to you? Curator: It's more heavily shadowed, perhaps? Look, in many ways the engraving as a whole echoes that eternal quest, doesn't it, to truly 'see' another person, to capture their essence, even on copper! Think of Schwartz as something of an emotional cartographer, mapping the human spirit. Editor: So, it's not just a technical exercise, but almost an emotional study. Curator: Precisely. Each head a separate country on the same continent, each one hinting at deeper stories. What are some of the conclusions about Frans you take from that map? Editor: This makes me think about practice, about how even tests can contain their own sort of beauty and meaning, even when isolated! Thanks for sharing that. Curator: And thank you, for seeing the archipelago in what might, at first, appear to be an isolated set of islands.