Brug over een gracht 1890 - 1946

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this drawing of a bridge over a canal in pencil, somewhere, sometime. The thing that grabs me is the incompleteness of it, you know? It's like a half-remembered dream, or a sketch from life, caught in the moment. I love the way the pencil lines kind of hover on the page, not quite defining everything, but suggesting the form of a bridge, some buildings, maybe even some figures down below. Look at how he renders the stonework with these quick, scribbled marks, and then the reflections in the water below – so subtle, but so effective! It's like he's trying to capture not just what he sees, but the feeling of being there, the light, the atmosphere. To me it is reminiscent of some of James McNeill Whistler's etchings, where the subject becomes more about tone, and the relationships between objects, than the objects themselves. It shows us how art can be an ongoing conversation, an exchange of ideas across time, a form which embraces ambiguity.