Studier af sfinxer. Efter relieffer. Notat 1900 - 1905

Editor: We're looking at "Studies of Sphinxes. After Reliefs. Note" by Niels Larsen Stevns, likely from around 1900 to 1905. It's a pencil drawing, kind of loose and exploratory, and it feels…fragmentary. Like glimpsing a dream. What do you make of it? Curator: Fragmentary is perfect! I see a restless mind at work, a spirit flitting between the monumental and the momentary. Notice how the sphinxes aren’t rendered as majestic finished pieces, but as quick impressions, jotted down in a notebook. What do you suppose drew Stevns to these ancient figures? Editor: Well, sphinxes are pretty iconic, right? Symbols of mystery, power, ancient knowledge... Curator: Exactly! And Stevns was painting during a period obsessed with symbolism, the hidden meanings beneath surfaces. Maybe he was less interested in depicting sphinxes and more in capturing their elusive essence. Think of the notebook as a collector of subconscious rumblings – scribbled reminders of feelings, dreams, all bound to an earthly figure. It’s as though he’s asking, “What is the enigma within myself?” Do you think this drawing achieves something a grand painting might not? Editor: Definitely. There’s an immediacy to it, like we're seeing directly into his process. The roughness almost enhances that sense of mystery. It feels less… solved. Curator: Precisely. Sometimes the sketch is closer to the soul. We get to see what he felt, rather than just what he saw. Perhaps the artist, in attempting to capture his impression of sphinxes in an early 20th century Europe awash with change, succeeded in leaving behind an unintentional study of himself. Editor: So it's a drawing of sphinxes, but also a drawing *about* Niels Larsen Stevns wrestling with big ideas? I hadn’t thought about it that way! Curator: It's a mirror, reflecting both the artist and the ages. That’s what makes art so perpetually exciting, isn’t it?