Hooioppers in een weiland 1910 - 1918

Alexander Shilling made this pencil drawing of haystacks and fieldworkers in a notebook. It’s so great to see an artist just working things out! The quick, layered marks show him thinking, correcting, and adjusting as he goes, which is everything. The graphite is dense in some areas, creating depth and shadow, and light in others, letting the white of the page stand in for the sky. Shilling's lines are not precious; they're searching, almost clumsy. There's this vertical slash, for instance, on the right-hand side of the right page. Is it a tree trunk? Or just a doodle? I love how these loose, suggestive gestures capture a whole scene. Shilling was part of the late 19th, early 20th century art world, when artists like Monet were exploring similar landscape subjects with a different set of formal concerns. This drawing feels like a personal, intimate moment, a refreshing reminder that art is often about the process of seeing and feeling, more than about making a perfect picture.