Skitse af Børglum kloster. Forarbejde til Vendelboer på plyndringstogt mod Børglum kloster" 1864 - 1941

Niels Larsen Stevns made this sketch of Børglum Kloster with a pencil, probably en plein air. I love these preparatory sketches. They often reveal a side of the artist we don’t see in the finished work. Here, we see the initial stages of capturing the essence of a place. The pencil lines are searching, testing the boundaries of form and space. It's fascinating to think about the dialogue the artist was having with the landscape as they were drawing. The scratchy marks and uncertain lines speak to the initial struggle of translating a three-dimensional scene onto a flat surface. You can see Stevns experimenting with different marks to suggest texture and depth. A lot of the marks are about feeling, and thinking. It's like he’s saying, “What does the wind feel like here? How do these stones feel?" This is how painting functions as a way of thinking. We are so lucky to see this quiet moment of investigation, which he then turned into a much bigger history painting.