Grasshopper (1918 CE)

Julie de Graag’s Sprinkhaan turns a small creature into a commanding graphic image. The grasshopper is rendered with such clarity and control that it seems at once closely studied and deliberately transformed, its angular body and delicate limbs held within a composition of striking economy. Printed in black and green, the work shows de Graag’s gift for making even the most modest subject feel vivid, exact, and unexpectedly monumental.

An Insect Seen with Exacting Attention

Sprinkhaan was created in 1918 by the Dutch printmaker Julie de Graag, an artist closely associated with Art Nouveau and with the broader early 20th-century fascination for natural form. Her work often returned to plants, insects, and other small elements of the living world, treating them not as decorative fillers but as worthy subjects in themselves. This print belongs to the final years of her career and reflects her sustained interest in woodcut as a medium capable of combining precision, stylization, and visual intensity. It later entered the Rijksmuseum in 1935 through a gift from G.A. de Graag.

A Small Creature, Carefully Transformed

De Graag’s highly focused depictions of nature have often been understood as more than simple exercises in observation. Her repeated attention to insects and plants suggests a mode of looking that was disciplined, patient, and perhaps deeply restorative during difficult periods of her life. In Sprinkhaan, that concentration is especially clear. The grasshopper’s fragile anatomy is not softened or generalized, but translated into a sharply structured image that preserves both delicacy and tension.

Between Natural Form and Art Nouveau Design

Sprinkhaan holds an important place within early 20th-century Dutch printmaking and within the visual culture shaped by Art Nouveau. The movement’s admiration for organic structure and flowing line finds a distinctive expression here, though de Graag’s approach is more severe and distilled than overtly decorative. The grasshopper becomes both a real insect and a rhythmic arrangement of form, balanced between close observation and formal abstraction.

That balance helps explain the print’s broader resonance. It demonstrates not only de Graag’s technical command of woodcut, but also her sensitivity to the beauty and vulnerability of life in small forms. As in much of her work, the natural world is not treated as picturesque backdrop, but as a source of structure, fragility, and quiet intensity.

Printed from Two Blocks

The piece is a woodcut print on paper, created from two blocks in black and green ink. This version of Sprinkhaan measures 12.4 by 12.4 cm (4.88 by 4.88 inches). Other versions of the subject also exist, including a smaller print measuring 7.7 by 8.7 cm (3.03 by 3.43 inches) and a related drawing executed in ink, pencil, chalk, and deck paint. The use of two blocks allowed de Graag to create a crisp interplay of contour and color, giving the insect a vivid presence within a compact format.

How the Print Entered the Rijksmuseum

The artwork was gifted to the Rijksmuseum in 1935 by G.A. de Graag, adding it to the museum’s important holdings of early 20th-century Dutch prints. Since then, it has remained in the Rijksmuseum, where it forms part of the institution’s broader record of Dutch graphic art and design.