Gezicht op kasteel Duivenvoorde vanuit de tuin 1926

Simon Moulijn made this drawing of Duivenvoorde Castle with pen in hand, looking out from the garden. The way the scene is composed is really beautiful. The dark trees frame the castle in the distance. It must have been so peaceful to sit there with the blank page, translating the shapes of leaves and the stones into line after line. The ink creates such a rich texture. You can feel him rendering the dark shade and soft light of the scene. Look at how he’s used short, quick strokes to create the effect of light filtering through leaves. He has captured the volume of those trees with a kind of visual shorthand. Moulijn obviously cared about looking, and about buildings. I bet he'd have loved the work of someone like Agnes Martin, or maybe Cy Twombly. Artists are always looking and learning from each other, dead or alive. It's a sort of eternal conversation. Painting, drawing, it's all about finding your own language to describe what you see and feel. And isn't that a gorgeous thing to do.