Flat landscape with tree 1908

Friedrich Mook made this flat landscape with a tree, probably with pastels or maybe thin watercolour washes. I can imagine him gently coaxing the colors across the page. The palette is muted, almost monochromatic, dominated by earth tones, but then flecks of yellow and blue animate the surface. You can feel how thinly the colors have been applied - pale washes bleeding into one another. In the bottom left, there is his signature, written in the same hand as the marks that form the landscape itself. Look closely, and you see how the tree has been built up through small, repetitive marks of blue and yellow – little dabs of colour that coalesce into form, like Cezanne, or even Van Gogh. I like to think about how artists across generations are in constant dialogue with each other. A quiet, intimate conversation. Painting is a way to think aloud, isn't it? A place to meditate and be free.