The Mountain Lake

Rodolphe Bresdin

1840

An intensely worked etching in which Bresdin uses dense, looping lines to turn a mountain lake and its shoreline into a brooding, almost fantastical landscape.

A massive, gnarled tree carved in deep black anchors the right edge while a swirl of fine, restless marks opens to distant cliffs, water, and tiny human figures, giving the scene an uncanny depth and textured atmosphere.

The print shows how etching could move beyond straightforward depiction to a visionary, symbolist sensibility—Bresdin’s obsessive linework helped expand the expressive possibilities of printmaking and influenced later symbolist and surrealist artists.

Palette

Exhibitions

French Photographs: Daguerre to Atget

1945

Symbolism, Synthesists, and the Fin-de-Siècle

1972

Sculptors' Drawings

1933

Twenty Lithographs: Graphic Art Processes

1941