Escher did not fill the page of his diary for the first week of January 1942 with appointments but rather with a list. He was often writing lists in his diary, from shopping lists and train times to lists of work sold and his own weight and that of his family members. But this was a very special list. It contained the names of the artists who had joined the ‘Kultuurkamer’, which was established on 25 November 1941. In Germany itself, the ‘Reichskulturkammer’ was founded on 22 September 1933 by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Its Dutch counterpart was also established to serve the occupying force and its Nazi ideology. Keywords were nationalism, solidarity with the nation and the people, historical awareness, banishing ‘degenerate, unhealthy, unnatural creativity’ and a ‘positive Germanic attitude’. Any artist wishing to exhibit, publish or make music had to be a member. Jews were excluded. By becoming a member, one was formally assenting to the politics of the occupier.

We’ve reached the end of 2018. On Facebook and here, on Escher today, every week we brought you a story about the life and work of M.C. Escher. All the images we used are collected in this video. We thank everyone for your attention this year and we will keep providing you with stories in 2019!

In the autumn and winter of 1930-1931 Escher developed the sketches he had produced and photographs he had taken during his spring trip through the Italian provinces of Campanile and Calabria accompanied by his friends Giuseppe Haas-Triverio, Roberto Schiess and Jean Roussett. The woodcuts and lithographs that he produced bear the poetic names of the places he had visited: Palizzi, Morano, Pentedatillo, Stilo, Scilla, Tropea, Santa Severina, Rocco Imperiale, Rossano. He was so impressed by the mountain village of Pentedattilo that he produced two woodcuts and a lithograph of it.

Many people regard Escher as the master of illusions. A wizard on paper who tricks you with his impossible constructions and wondrous metamorphoses. What he creates cannot exist. Even if you see it with your own eyes. Yet that is not always the case. Escher was indeed fascinated by the illusions that the flat surface could evoke, but sometimes he just wanted to show the beauty in reality. Three Worlds is one of the finest examples of this.

Bearing the same title as was used for the retrospective exhibition in 1968, the book De werelden van M.C. Escher (The Worlds of M.C. Escher) was launched in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague on 23 November 1971. On 10 December, the artist himself received the first copy in the Rosa Spier Huis (retirement home for Dutch artists) in Laren. Prior to this it was clear that the book would be a huge success. The Committee for the Collective Propaganda of the Dutch book (CPNB) had proclaimed it the ‘Book of the Month’. Publisher Meulenhoff initially aimed at 40,000 copies, but soon increased the circulation to 50,000. Yet even this revised quantity had already been sold by the time the book was available in the bookstore. Once again the number of copies was increased, this time to 75,000, but within a month these were all sold too. For an introductory price of ƒ12.50, buyers received a book containing five introductions, a bibliography, an overview of Escher’s main exhibitions and lectures, and 270 captioned images (including eight in colour). A bargain.

On 4 December 1988 the graphic designer Gerd Arntz passed away. He was one of Escher’s best friends. With his distinctive style as a graphic artist, Arntz was an outsider among his colleagues. Just as Escher was. Both ‘outsiders’ appreciated each other’s work. The two corresponded for years, trading experiences and ideas and commenting on each other’s work. They also met at their respective homes and Arntz continued to visit Escher in the ‘Rosa Spier Huis’ (retirement home for Dutch artists), where Escher died in 1972.

On November 24, 1960, the writer’s workshop Oulipo was founded. It stands for ‘Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle‘ or the ‘Workplace for Possible Literature‘. It is a loosely formed group of French-speaking writers and mathematicians who produce literary works that are subject to certain conditions or restrictions. The use of this type of restriction was not new (writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, Ferdinand de Saussure and Gertrude Stein already worked with it), but it is the first time that it has been done in an organized manner.

Escher was crazy about the jagged and vertical landscapes he encountered in Abruzzo and Calabria, on the Amalfi coast, on Sicily and on the French island of Corsica. He traversed these areas in a variety of ways for many years. Armed with his sketchpad and wearing knickerbockers, coarse argyle socks and sturdy walking shoes, he climbed the Corsican peaks, descended to the coastline of Amalfi, walked through the rugged mountains in Abruzzo and Calabria and braved the heat of Sicily. But there was one place where he kept returning to: Atrani.

From 14 November to 14 December 1950 Escher had an exhibition in the Amsterdam gallery Le Canard. He was exhibiting there along with his fellow graphic artist Harry van Kruiningen. The invitation card was adorned with a vignette featuring little devils, a wood engraving that Escher had produced specially for the exhibition. He displayed graphic work and a hand-woven tapestry there, as the card also shows.

Last week I wrote that Escher hasn't been positively regarded by art critics for years. But in the end he himself was his greatest critic. There are certainly exceptions, but often he was dissatisfied with his latest creation. This varied from ‘this is just not good enough’ and ‘there should be more to it than this’ to ‘this really is a total failure.’ At the end of October 1955 he was again dissatisfied with his work.

Nowadays M.C. Escher may be very popular with both the general public and art critics, but this was certainly not always the case. He has been ignored for years by many art lovers and critics. His work was dismissed as being decorative and was at most technically well made. Contentwise he had nothing to report. This opinion is already reflected in the earliest reviews of the twenties and kept returning in the decades that followed.

On 20 October 1922, Escher creates a drawing that—in retrospect—would have a major impact on his life. He made his first voyage by freighter that autumn, from Amsterdam to the Spanish port city of Málaga. The ship also moored in Alicante and Taragona, after which Escher traveled by train to Barcelona, Madrid, Avila and Toledo. In each city he stayed for a few days to take in the setting properly. On 17 October, after a long and very slow train journey from Toledo, he arrived in Granada. There he visited the beautiful Alhambra. This 14th-century castle was once built as an aristocratic and administrative centre for the last Moorish regime in Spain.

From 2 October 2018 to 13 January 2019, Escher in The Palace will be exhibiting two special woodblocks that Escher cut in May 1957 and the book in which the accompanying prints were published. The blocks and the book stem from the collection of Museum Meermanno in The Hague. Escher in The Palace is proud to be able to exhibit them and we are therefore very grateful to Museum Meermanno for this loan.

As of today Leonardo da Vinci can be seen in the Teylers museum in Haarlem. It is the first major overview ever of original artworks by Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in the Netherlands. Teylers shows 33 drawings of the master and as many works of contemporaries. Da Vinci was not only able to draw and paint beautifully, he is also world famous for his inventions of flying machines and military artillery. He did not see art and science as separate ‘worlds’. For him they had everything to do with each other. This is where Da Vinci and Escher find each other. Both are first and foremost excellent observers. They look at the world with a logical, orderly view and know how to get those observations and the thoughts they derive from them on paper. They both did this with their left hand. Both are also part of popular culture through one or a few works (think of the Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian man and Relativity and Day and Night), but it is questionable if people know who the makers are.

In October 1925 the young couple Maurits and Jetta can finally start setting up their first home. It’s the top floor of a house that is still under construction, in a new neighborhood on the slopes of the Monteverde. The house on Via Alessandro Poerio 100 was beautifully situated with a view of the Tiber valley, in the southeastern part of the city. On the other side of the river was the Monte Palatino, with the Roman quarter Trastevere below. The couple had already bought the house at the end of 1924, but first they had to wait until it was finished, after which it turned out to be too humid. They let it dry all summer and spent those months at the Albergo del Toro in Ravello; the place where they had met.

On September 23, 1957, Escher returned to Amsterdam from a sea voyage with the freighter s.s. Luna. By then, Escher had long been addicted to traveling on cargo ships and he seized every opportunity to book such a trip. In August and September 1957 he bobbed for seven weeks on the Mediterranean Sea while enjoying the waves, the peace, the light and the silence. Back in the Netherlands, he mused on for a while.

Lizards had fascinated him for quite some time, but in the summer and fall of 1956 Escher was particularly busy with them. This fascination came not so much from the behavior or way of life of the creatures, but from the characteristic form. It lent itself very well for making tessellations. In that respect, a lizard (or salamander) interested him as much or as little as birds and fish did. These three animal groups are by far the most common in his work, but they owe that status purely to their form.

Between 1927 and 1938 the Escher family spent almost every summer in the Swiss town of Steckborn, with Jetta’s sister Nina and her husband Oskar Schibler. In 1929 they even stayed for several months, from July to mid October. Escher had already made a trip to the Italian Abruzzo region together with his friend Giuseppe Haas-Triverio in spring. The tour yielded 28 drawings, one of which he developed into a lithograph in Steckborn, his first of an Italian landscape.

During the war years, the volume of new prints Escher produced fell sharply. He lacked inspiration and he had other things . But that does not mean he was not engaged in any creative work. During the war he threw himself into his regular division drawings, constantly devising new variants for filling the plane with regular patterns. Between the outbreak of WWII in 1939 and the Dutch liberation in May 1945, he produced about 35 new drawings.

On 4 July 1935 Escher and his family moved from Rome to the Swiss town Château-d'Oex, after which he traveled almost directly to the Netherlands to arrange things for a long stay in Switzerland. From his parents’ home in The Hague he visited, among other things, his old teacher Jessurun de Mesquita, he consulted with his cousin Anton Escher about a logo for his machine factory, he talks to the Dutch postal service ‘PTT’ and ‘Drukkerij Enschedé’ about his design for the aviation fund stamp and he meets with his friends Jan van der Does the Willebois and Bas Kist.
Between all visits he spends three weeks working on a very detailed, loving portrait of his father.

On 19 August 1960, Escher held a lecture at the Fifth Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography. He was invited to this congress by Prof. Dr Carolina H. MacGillavry, professor in chemical crystallography at the University of Amsterdam. In 1950 she was appointed as the first female member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. MacGillavry was a great admirer of Escher and would go on to publish the book Symmetry Aspects of M.C. Escher’s Periodic Drawings in 1965. For crystallographers, the tessellations on which Escher spent years working in his sketchbooks were ideal teaching materials. His patterns are very well suited to being used to study the symmetry, repetition and reflection that are so characteristic of the field. Below is one of the drawings from Escher’s sketchbooks that was exhibited in Cambridge and is included in the book by MacGillavry.

In March 1965, Escher met the French artist and professor Albert Flocon, lecturer at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Flocon mainly created copper engravings and, like Escher, he was fascinated by the mystery of the perspective. Especially the curvilinear perspective, a form that Escher has also used several times (think of Hand with reflecting sphere, Balcony, Three Spheres II, Drop (Dewdrop) and Self Portrait in Spherical Mirror).
The meeting proved to be of great importance to Escher; Flocon ensured that his prints became known in Paris. The professor personally mediated on the sale of prints and an organized Escher exhibition in Paris. In October 1965 Flocon published a ten-page article about Escher in the important monthly Jardin des Arts.

Today is International Cat Day, a great time to show the cats Escher captured in one of his prints. There are not that many. He often used animals in his work, but his tessellations and metamorphoses mostly feature birds, fish and reptiles. The cats are mainly from his younger years. This is one of those early ones, from when he was 21 years old, around the time he decided to become a graphic artist. On 17 September 1919 he moved to Haarlem. He gets a white cat from his landlady, which would inspire him to produce several woodcuts. On this one the cat lies on the lap of a man who visited Escher in Haarlem. We do not know who it is. Probably one of his childhood friends, Bas Kist or Jan van der Does de Willebois, or his older brother Nol.
See also International Cat Day 2017, featuring a cat on Corsica.

Summer is in full swing. Not the time to be working hard. That is something for autumn, winter and early spring. At least, that was the timetable to which Escher largely adhered throughout his working life. If you look at the months he worked (these are known from 1922 onwards), they usually span September to May. It is a logical consequence of his approach; in spring and summer he went out to get inspiration, to take photos and to draw. In autumn and in winter he developed these preliminary studies into woodcuts, wood engravings and lithographs.
Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions to this rule. 43 exceptions to be precise.

It is 268 years ago today that Johann Sebastian Bach died. On 28 July 1750 the German composer breathed his last breath in Leipzig. Maurits Cornelis Escher was a big fan. The similarities between them were considerable: the mathematical order, the strictness of the rules, the symmetry, the systematic approach.
Escher was particularly fascinated by Bach’s canon. In a letter to his friend Hein ’s-Gravezande in 1940, he wrote:

'Now, I should like to say something else to you about the connection with music, primarily that of Bach, i.e. the Fugue or, put more simply, the canon. I loved Bach and I love him too without “understanding” his technique, but since I understand a (little) bit of it, I love it all the more.'

It is a tropical summer in the Netherlands and what could be more tropical than a palm tree? Certainly, Maurits Cornelis Escher saw something very special in this iconic tree. He was never specific about what he saw, but it is striking how often it recurs in his work. The first of these was created in July 1923 — a stylised palm tree with fronds like parasols, hanging bunches of palm fruits, the scaly trunk and a halo that seems to surround the tree.

On 17 July 1950, Maurits and his youngest son Jan (11 years old) left for Paris, the beginning of a French trip just like the one he had made as a child.

'One hour before arriving in Paris, Jan said: you have to let me know as soon as you see the Eiffel Tower. But in the end he saw it before I did.'

Eldest son Arthur had moved to Lausanne to study geology on the advice of uncle Beer. George had recently enlisted for military service. On this, Escher wrote:

'George has been doing his military service for two weeks now, much to our chagrin, after years of delaying his studies. This is lousy, because you never know whether such a boy will later find the energy to continue studying. [This fear proved to be unfounded.] So we are here with Jantje who, still in primary school, will not be leaving us any time soon. '

In July 1960 Escher completed the last of his four ‘circle limits’. He had struggled with it for a while, but it was a publication by the Canadian professor H.S.M. Coxeter that set him on the right path. He had met this professor at the University of Toronto in 1954, during the International Congress of Mathematicians. In the article, Coxeter described how a tessellation from the centre to the edge of a circle is increasingly reduced and the motifs come to lie infinitely close together. In 1957 Coxeter gave a lecture for the Royal Society of Canada and he asked Escher by letter if he could use a few of the graphic artist’s works in the lecture. Afterwards, Coxeter sent Escher a copy of his lecture (which had been published under the name Crystal Symmetry and its Generalizations), in which he also included the figure about which Escher would become so enthusiastic. Coxeter in turn based this figure on the work of the French mathematician Jules Henri Poincaré, who visualised this form of hyperbolic geometry in his Poincaré disc.

In June 1952 Escher created the lithograph Gravity, which due to its subject naturally fits within the series of planetoids and stars that he depicted between 1948 and 1954. His celestial bodies all appear to be set in the same science fiction world, which somehow seems unlikely to be a place where Escher would feel at home. The first wood engraving Stars (1948) seems deceptively simple, but Gravity, Double Planetoid (1948) and Tetrahedral Planetoid (1954) are a lot more complex. These planetoids look as if they might be inhabited by civilisations somewhat like our own.
The planetoid featured in Gravity is a small stellated dodecahedron. Its body has twelve five-pointed stars which are each occupied by a pyramid. Escher loved this spatial figure because it's simple and complex at the same time.

On 22 June 1931 writer Jan Walch and Escher, together with publisher Van Dishoeck, talked about publishing a story by Walch which had been illustrated with woodcuts by Escher. The story was set in Oudewater, a town known for its ‘Heksenwaag’ (witches’ weigh house). It became famous during the 16th century because people accused of witchcraft were offered an honest chance of proving their innocence. In many cities and countries such trials were usually rigged, resulting in the burning or drowning of hundreds of innocent people. Many people accused of witchcraft from all over Europe rushed headlong to Oudewater to avoid being burned at the stake.
In the summer of 1931 Escher and Walch had visited the town together. The artist took photos and bought postcards that might help him with his subsequent illustrations. Three weeks later he sent Walch his first woodcut: a witch on a broomstick, floating above the sleepy town on a clear night.

Today is Eschers birthday and it's Father's Day too! That's why we show you a special photo in which father Maurits is posing with his family in front of the house in Ukkel in the fall of 1938. It's also a rare photo while Escher usually holds the camera himself. Escher is flanked by his sons George Arnold (center, born 23 July 1926) and Arthur Eduard (left, born 8 December 1928). Jan Christoffel, born 6 March 1938, is focussed on his brother George rather than looking into the camera.

On 15 June 1961, at 18.05, Escher left Baarn together with his wife Jetta. They took the train to Rotterdam where they boarded the night train to Bern at 20.03. The next morning they arrived in Bern at 7.44. There they were picked up by Escher’s friend Paul Keller and his daughter Theresa. Together with Theresa, Jetta left for the Keller home in Münsingen. Maurits and Paul took the train to Venice where they boarded the Cagliari.
It was the start of a boat trip that took the two friends to Trieste, Bari, Naples, Salerno, Catania, Messina, Palermo, Algiers, Lisbon, London and Hamburg. We know all this in detail because Escher kept a careful record of the trip in his travel journal.

On 7 June 1968, exactly 50 years ago today, ‘De werelden van Escher‘ (‘The Worlds of M.C. Escher’), the first Dutch retrospective exhibition of M.C. Escher, opened in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. It marked the occasion of Escher’s 70th birthday, on 17 June. It certainly was not his first exhibition but it was the first time an important art museum, of its own accord, was exhibiting a retrospective of his work. Approached both from an art history perspective and from Escher’s personal systematics.

You have 10 more days to view some remarkable Escher prints at Escher in The Palace. On 11 June they will be returned to the archive to be replaced with new graphic treasures. We previously discussed the woodcut The Third Day of the Creation, from a series in which Escher depicted the Creation in a stark contrast of black and white.
Today we focus on a woodcut that does not belong to this series, but which does have a biblical theme. The Fall of Man shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden at the moment they have eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden.

On 25 May 1930, Escher returned to his home town of Rome after travelling through the Italian provinces of Campanile and Calabria together with his friends Giuseppe Haas-Triverio, Roberto Schiess and Jean Roussett. In the autumn and winter he would go on to develop his impressions of that journey into a series of woodcuts and lithographs. As a basis for this he used sketches as well as photographs, which he made and took during the trip and stuck neatly in a photo album. At first glance these photographs seem like souvenirs of a beautiful holiday, but most of the landscapes would subsequently feature in his prints.
On 22 May 1930, the four companions were in the town of Rossano in Calabria.

In May 1937 Escher created Metamorphosis I, a narrative work in which the coastal town of Atrani slowly changes into a grid of cubes which subsequently transform into the shape of a caricatured Asian figure. If Atrani stands for the past in this print, the hooded Asian could be seen as the future. Thinking this through, the analogy of Escher’s life with that of an old martial arts master becomes an interesting one.

There is no better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than with a photo of a happy mother. Maurits created this portrait of his wife Jetta and their firstborn son George in the spring of 1927. The couple had just moved to their house on Via Alessandro Poerio in Rome. In the background the majolica tiles can be seen, which Escher designed for the hallway and the dining room. George (nicknamed ‘Jojo‘) had been born the summer before and, after living in several temporary houses, the young family were finally able to call this house their home. This happiness led to a second son in December 1928 and a third one in March 1938.

This work by Escher is a fitting illustration of Liberation Day, the day on which the Dutch celebrate the end of the German occupation in 1945. His birds and fish are wresting themselves free from the firm grip the tessellation is holding them in.

There is probably no artist who pictured himself as often as Rembrandt van Rijn did. About 40 of his self-portraits are known. But Escher too was no stranger to self-portraits. Between 1917 and 1950 he produced 12 of them, several while being reflected in a spherical mirror. Looking in the mirror he pictures his own image, the way he sees it, but also the way he wants it to be seen. Like all works, a self-portrait is based on reality, a perspective on this reality. That is particularly the case with Escher. The viewer wants to see the artist, but has to deal with the version the artist wishes to present of himself at that particular point in time.

Exactly 50 years ago, on 20 April 1968, Dutch weekly magazine Vrij Nederland published a long interview with M.C. Escher by the legendary journalist Bibeb (Elisabeth Lampe-Soutberg). At the time Escher was not really looking forward to it. Because he found the contents to negative, he didn't really come around to reading the magazine thoroughly.

'I relented, though I do not see the good of it. We have gone through an initial three-hour seance, but she is not satisfied in the least. The day after tomorrow she will return for another whole afternoon. It is nice to see her work, though—we talk while she keeps a large notebook on her lap in which she is constantly writing, barely looking at it while she is doing so. What will come of it I do not know, but we are in this boat together so I will bravely keep rowing. She is an entertaining and rather nice woman. She gets along with mother too and vice versa. (I informed her upfront about our unusual circumstances, which the article will not mention.) I will get to read her handiwork, to make alterations if needed, before it gets printed.'

Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant publishes a gradually expanding series on postwar pop culture in the Netherlands. The paper describes the history in 100 objects, focussing on utensils, decorative items, sports equipment, clothing and art objects too. Art journalist Mark Moorman wrote a piece on the wooden sphere featuring lizards that Escher had carved from beech wood in 1949. We have translated it for our readers from abroad.

In Escher at The Palace you can always view Escher’s most well-known works: Day and Night, Ascending and Descending, Reptiles, Waterfall, Print Gallery, Relativity, Encounter, Other World, Convex and Concave, etc. Yet we do, of course, also devote attention to the many other prints from his oeuvre, which spans over 50 years. But before they are given the attention they deserve and their 15 minutes of fame, they await their turn in the archive. Patiently, yet determinedly.

Good Friday, St Matthew Passion Day. For Escher, Easter had always been tied closely to this oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach. He was not alone: the St Matthew Passion is without a doubt the most popular piece of classical music in the Netherlands. Each year most of this country is fixated on Bach in the days leading up to Easter. But for Escher this love prevailed all year round. Everything in his life was connected to this composer who resembled him in so many ways. The systematic approach, the rhythm, the repetition, the symmetry. The similarities are considerable.

Maurits and Jetta did not just have a great time during their trip across and around the Mediterranean Sea in the spring of 1936, their journey also proved to be a great source of inspiration for the artist. To pay for it Escher had offered to produce a print of every port town they visited and give several copies of these to the Italian shipping company Adria. To be used as they saw fit. Between August 1936 and March 1937 this led to a whole series of new prints, including some that we discussed previously: Leaning Tower of Pisa, Catania and Porthole.
Still Life and Street is based on this trip too. It started with a drawing of a street in the coastal town of Savona, which he did on 10 June. Whereas other works from this period are quite realistic, this woodcut (together with Still Life with Mirror) started Escher’s journey towards optical illusion. He was used to integrating ‘screens’ in his landscapes and cityscapes, by building the composition out of elements that are stacked behind each other within the visual field. But in Still Life and Street he uses the technique to generate a shock effect in the viewer.

The weather in the Netherlands is not really cooperating, but it is true: today is the start of spring!

A common feature in Escher’s work is birds. He created hundreds of them. In his woodcuts, wood engravings and occasionally in a lithograph. Sometimes by themselves, but usually in a group. But most often he used them in his tessellations, which are heavily populated by birds.

On 18 March 1960 Escher finished one of his most iconic works: the lithograph Ascending and Descending. The print was the result of a remarkable exchange of ideas between the graphic artist and the British mathematician Roger Penrose. The latter first came into contact with M.C. Escher at his solo exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1954, which was held during the International Congress of Mathematicians of that year.

Today is the start of ‘Boekenweek’ (Book Week), a nice occasion to highlight an artwork that is increasingly rare: a bookplate. Escher created several of them, mostly for friends. The first one when he was only 17, for his own library.
The one you see here, from 1946, was for his opposite neighbour in Baarn, engineer Albert Ernst Bosman. He must have been a bookworm, looking at the one Escher pictured in this bookplate. He did not know it yet but this neighbour would be of great significance to him. Bosman was the one to bring him in contact with Hans de Rijk, the man of many pseudonyms.

On 5 March 1965 Escher received the culture prize of the city of Hilversum. He gave a lecture in which he demonstrated once again how funny he could be. For many people the name Escher calls to mind an image of a bearded, strict, precise man labouring away on mind-boggling prints in the isolation of his study.
This image existed in his own time too and is one that Escher initially endorses in his lecture:

'By nature I am not spontaneous. Creating a graphic print demands patience and deliberateness and the ideas that I want to express in it usually come to life after careful consideration. Therefore, I mostly spend my time in a quiet studio and, however beneficial it might be to practicing my profession, it does not foster eloquence.'

Despite the atrocities of war, some kind of optimism took hold of Escher at the end of February 1943. It was fuelled by nature. On 20 February he writes in his diary: ‘two butterflies and lots of snowdrops around farmers gardens’. And on the 22 February: ‘first song of the blackbird’. On 3 March 1943 he even starts working on a new print. For this lithograph, Reptiles, he does have to borrow a stone. That is why only 30 copies were printed.

In a letter to his son Arthur from 27 February 1955 Escher writes about Light in August, a 1932 novel by William Faulkner, which Escher had read it in translation.

'... for — Christ! — that gentleman’s English is so damned difficult. Thanks to the good English lessons you had at secondary school you may well understand the original. I have not read a modern novel that had such an effect on me for many years, probably not since The Plague by Camus. It is partly that the psychological treatment of the murderer, comparable to Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, though completely different, is unusually gripping. He is one of those rare writers with whom one dare not find fault as a layman and who towers over most of their contemporaries.'