Studier af ørn 1864 - 1941

Niels Larsen Stevns made this drawing of an eagle with graphite on paper. It's a quick, observational sketch, all wiry lines and tentative marks. I imagine Stevns, notebook in hand, trying to capture the essence of this bird. What’s so compelling here is the artist's desire to understand something through drawing. It’s like he’s thinking with his pencil, figuring out the eagle’s form, its weight, the texture of its feathers. You can see the ghost of lines where he's tried to find the perfect curve of a wing or the angle of its head. The off-white paper adds to the sense of intimacy, as if we're looking at a page from his personal sketchbook. It reminds me of artists like Delacroix, who also used drawing as a way to explore and understand the world around them. It's all about that ongoing conversation between artists, isn't it?