Studieblaadje met een oude man met zijn hond, twee staande meisjes en een manskop before 1917

Matthijs Maris made this study of an old man, his dog, and some girls with ink on paper, and you can see it today at the Rijksmuseum. Look at the flurry of marks that make up this piece, you can almost see Maris’s hand moving across the page, testing, feeling, searching. I bet he started with the figures grouped in the center, smudging the ink to create depth and shadow in the trees, and then maybe he added the two girls on the right almost as an afterthought, or perhaps as a way to try out a different way of seeing. When I look at this, I think about other artists like Paula Modersohn-Becker, who also captured the everyday lives of people with such sensitivity and attention to detail. You know, it’s like artists are always talking to each other, across time and space, inspiring each other to see the world in new ways. And in the end, it’s this conversation, this exchange of ideas, that keeps art alive.