Studie af figur i profil, ornamentik og gesimsprofil 1919

This small sketch was made by Niels Larsen Stevns, with pencil on paper, and it’s full of the artist's concentrated looking. I love these kinds of works on paper; a rehearsal, a study. I imagine Larsen Stevns really looking, his eyes moving back and forth between the object and the page. Maybe it was a statue, or a frieze, or maybe a series of different architectural elements, all there in front of him. There's a real range of marks, from soft, smudgy, blurred lines to more defined cross-hatching. It's like he's thinking aloud with the pencil, trying to get a handle on the form. I can almost feel him there, squinting, head cocked to one side, trying to capture the essence of what he sees. Sketching like this is such a great tradition. Delacroix, Daumier, Goya, you name it... they all did it. Larsen Stevns is in good company. It's about learning to see, and then sharing that vision with the world.