Brug over een gracht 1890 - 1946

This is a pencil sketch on paper by Cornelis Vreedenburgh, and it looks like the kind of drawing an artist might make to plan a painting, or just to record the scene. I like to imagine Vreedenburgh standing on the bank of a canal in the Netherlands, quickly making marks with his pencil, trying to capture the light and shadow and the structure of the bridge. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the paper, deciding what to include and what to leave out. Notice the way the shading creates a sense of depth, even though it's just a sketch. It's not a perfect rendering, but it has a liveliness that a photograph might lack. The drawing has a really nice feeling. I think this sketch is also talking to other artist sketches and paintings, across time. It’s an ongoing conversation where artists inspire one another’s creativity and it embraces the ambiguity and uncertainty that allows for multiple interpretations.