Skitser af figur og ornament 1906

This page of sketches of a figure and ornament was made by Niels Larsen Stevns, but when, we don’t know. Looking at this page, you see the faint grid underneath the drawings, and it feels like the start of something. Larsen Stevns works over these structural lines, trying to conjure a body in light strokes. I can imagine him in the studio, charcoal in hand, circling around the model, drawing and redrawing the same line, trying to find the right one. I feel you get a sense of the presence of the body, it's kind of slumped. Then there’s this funny floral shape in the corner, a solid splodge of green watercolor surrounding it. Maybe he needed to test the color, or maybe he just needed a break from the figure. In this interplay between the representational and the abstract, Larsen Stevns seems to ask, how can we learn to see the world afresh?