My Dream

Rodolphe Bresdin

1883

This small etching is Bresdin’s dreamlike harbor scene in which he uses dense, nervy lines to fuse buildings, trees, boats, and tiny figures into a single uncanny, visionary composition.

What strikes you first is the thicket of minutely incised marks that resolve into spires, masts and a solitary statue on a pier, so that the nearer you peer the more a bustling, almost fantastical world of detail and texture emerges.

Made near the end of the 19th century, this work moves etching away from simple topographical depiction toward allegory and the unconscious, anticipating Symbolist and later Surrealist ideas about landscape as a projection of the imagination.

Palette

Art Terms

Etching Intaglio Print Symbolism Cityscape Landscape Monochrome

Exhibitions

Symbolism, Synthesists, and the Fin-de-Siècle

1972

Dream/Reality/Dream

1977

Modern European Art

1933

French Paintings from the Molyneux Collection

1952