Fietsers en auto's op een straat 1890 - 1946

Here we have a graphite drawing, 'Fietsers en auto's op een straat', made by Cornelis Vreedenburgh. Look at how the forms have been built up from a layering of lines, like a kind of visual knitting. I can imagine him working en plein air, quickly, almost shorthand. The marks are really descriptive, suggesting the hubbub of the city with its constant traffic. I wonder if he started with the buildings and then added in the people and cars later, or if he was trying to capture the scene all at once. The beauty of drawing is how economical it can be. What I love about Vreedenburgh’s works is how he manages to capture so much with so little, distilling the essence of a place or moment into a few well-chosen lines. There's a real freedom in this type of sketching, you can feel the artist responding in real time to their surroundings. It reminds me that we’re all just trying to make sense of the world in our own way.