Hollande, at Cleaning (a.k.a. "Beim Putzen")

Max Pollak

Max Pollak spent some time in the Netherlands in the mid 1910s recording the lives of everyday townspeople: fishermen, women at market, children playing. Inspired by the artists from the time of Rembrandt whose marks had been left upon Holland for centuries prior, Pollak creates a reverent atmosphere around a young woman wearing a traditional winged bonnet bent to the task of cleaning, using a plate that is majority black ink and only minimally etched, coaxing the figure to emerge from the dark as if illuminated by a spotlight. The unseen source of light gives the scene a glow of serenity.

Max Pollak, painter and printmaker, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia on February 2, 1886, but his family moved to Vienna, Austria when he was six months old. He was raised in Vienna and, in 1902, at sixteen years of age he entered the Vienna Academy of Art. He studied painting and printmaking under William Unger and Ferdinand Schmutzer. In 1911, he traveled to Italy, France, and Holland to study the works of the masters.