Landscape 1902

Maxime Maufra made this landscape drawing with pencil in 1912. Look at the way he builds up the image with so many lines. For Maufra, like many artists, artmaking was a journey. The drawing’s surface has a lovely texture. You can almost feel the grain of the paper and the soft, powdery quality of the pencil. Notice how Maufra uses different pressures to create depth and shadow. See the darker, bolder lines that define the tree trunks in the foreground. Then, look at the lighter, almost ethereal lines in the background that suggest the distant hills and buildings. My eye keeps going back to the cluster of trees on the right. The way the lines cross and intersect creates a sense of density and movement. It’s like the trees are breathing, or maybe even whispering secrets to each other. There’s something very Cézanne-like in his mark-making. It's art as conversation, always building on what came before. It’s this ambiguity that makes the drawing so engaging. What do you see?