Schaap c. 1883 - 1914

Curator: I'm immediately drawn in by the immediacy of this piece; there’s such raw energy. It reminds me of flipping through an artist's private sketchbook and glimpsing their fleeting thoughts. Editor: This is "Schaap," or "Sheep," a drawing by Floris Arntzenius, likely from somewhere between 1883 and 1914. We believe it comes directly from one of his sketchbooks. Curator: A sheep! I wouldn’t have guessed that if you hadn’t told me. I was so focused on the feeling that I completely missed the subject. It’s almost abstract. But now that you say it, the shape…it’s like the Platonic ideal of a sheep! Editor: Arntzenius had a knack for capturing scenes from daily life—streetscapes, portraits, landscapes—with an impressionistic style, even in sketch form. What makes this interesting is precisely the ordinary quality of it. He captured everyday scenes of the early twentieth-century Netherlands. This drawing gives us a private moment with a very familiar subject, made poignant through its abstraction. Curator: The composition is quite striking. It almost feels like the sheep is bursting out of the frame, eager to return to its pasture. I get the distinct feeling that he needed to record something essential, fast! Editor: I wonder what the conditions were when Arntzenius made the sketch, or, in what way it might have ended up as a part of this specific sketchbook, and how the sketchbook as a whole might have worked as part of Arntzenius’s process. Did he work outdoors directly from the scene? Or was it more about rapidly committing impressions to paper as reference for more developed work later on? Curator: Maybe both? You get a sense that he truly felt what it was like to be a sheep at that moment: sturdy but gentle, a little clumsy, heavy. Editor: Perhaps its value lies less in representing a sheep per se, and more in how it serves as evidence of artistic practice and the conceptualization of the subject in its moment. A quick sketch provides access to his first idea! It brings you into Arntzenius’ studio in a very special way. Curator: Yes, a window into a very specific fleeting moment! Thanks, Floris, for bringing a sheep, or something sheep-like, into our studio! Editor: It makes you reconsider the art historical hierarchy and question whether sketches might reveal the essence of the subject in unexpected ways!