15. Pieter Bout
(1658-1719)

The Skaters

(click on image to print)
Bout, The Skaters

The Skaters

Etching, Bartsch 2, Hollstein 2 ii/ii, 194 x 273 mm. Very fine, rich impression on laid paper with the watermark of a fleur-de-lis in a shield (17th century), with thread margins almost all around. Inky marks in the plate margins, as described by Hollstein for this state (the first state in London is probably unique); a nick and two fold marks in the upper left corner and slight traces of a center fold, otherwise in fine condition. Bout, who was born and died in Brussels, was primarily a landscape painter and draughtsman and made only five etchings, all of which are both rare and desirable. This skating scene is perhaps the most desirable, for it is one of the very best etched depictions ever made of that prototypical Netherlandish subject. Bout shows his painterly inclinations in the wiping of the plate, where the sky just above the horizon line, instead of being evenly dark, is heavily wiped to take ink out of the lines, producing the effect of a blast of light glancing off the low clouds (the reproductions in Bartsch and Hollstein show similar wiping). This is not a typical etcher’s device, but the result is that the image “reads” when seen from a distance greater than is usual in looking at an etching -- much like a painting.