Eye Candy for Today: John Chrome landscape etching

Tree on a Mound, John Chrome, etching, 13 x 12 in. ( 34 x 32 cm), in the collection fo the National Gallery of Art, DC. English landscape painter John Chrome, who was active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, evokes a wooded scene with a wonderful selection of straight and wavy lines and textural scribbles, highlighted with areas left blank. A splash of light emerges from behind the mound on the right, beside which are two figures that appear to me to be a woman and child (images above, bottom). I particularly enjoy the way Chrome has varied the directrion of hatching on the hillside to the left, adding to the impression of a rolling, uneven surface. Rabbit Hole Dept: The museum’s website lists the work as “etching on chine applique”. I wasn’t familiar with the term and did a litte digging (trying, as always, to skip the “AI overview” and go to actual source websites). Chine applique is a printing method for intaglio prints in which the print is made on a thin sheet of paper,…