Een lamme maraboe - Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita

A striking 1909 woodcut by Dutch artist Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, featuring a minimalist and bold depiction of a marabou stork.

Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita was a Dutch graphic artist known for his mastery of the woodcut medium. This work, titled Een lamme maraboe, demonstrates his ability to reduce complex organic forms into bold, graphic shapes. The composition relies on a stark contrast between the deep black ink and the cream paper, a hallmark of his approach to printmaking. The marabou stork is depicted with a deliberate, almost geometric simplicity, which emphasises the bird's physical posture and the weight of its form. De Mesquita often turned to the animal kingdom for his subjects, observing creatures with a keen eye for their unique silhouettes and movements. In this print, the bird stands within a structured frame, its head bowed and its body rendered as a solid mass. The artist avoids unnecessary detail, choosing instead to focus on the essential lines that define the creature. The inclusion of the title and the date within the lower border integrates the text into the overall design, a common practice in the graphic arts of the early twentieth century. This piece reflects the influence of Japanese woodblock prints, which were widely admired by European artists of the period for their economy of line and flat planes of colour. As a teacher at the School of Applied Arts in Haarlem, de Mesquita influenced a generation of artists, including M.C. Escher. His work is characterised by a disciplined approach to the woodblock, where every cut serves a purpose in the final image. This print is a clear example of his technical precision and his ability to convey character through minimal visual information. It remains a representative example of his contribution to Dutch graphic design, offering a quiet, observational study of nature through a modern, stylised lens.