Handwerkende vrouw in een strandstoel 1890 - 1946

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this pencil drawing of a woman in a beach chair, on paper. The sketchiness of the marks really gets me. You know how a drawing can have a special kind of intimacy? It’s right there in the artist's hand, thinking, searching, and feeling their way into the image. Look at the legs, kind of casually crossed, captured with such simple lines. It feels almost like the drawing is breathing. The texture of the page is present and crucial to the drawing, the blank space as important as the lines themselves. It is such a quickly rendered sketch but it gets across all the key information about the person depicted. There’s a Dutch artist, Piet van der Hem, from a similar period, whose quick, economic lines also evoke such a sense of human empathy. Ultimately, art’s about seeing, but it’s also about feeling.