Gezicht op kasteel Duivenvoorde vanuit de tuin 1926

Simon Moulijn created this view of Duivenvoorde Castle from the garden with pen and ink. Look at how he's built up the scene, one tiny stroke at a time. It's like watching a forest grow, each line a little seed of an idea. There's a whole world in the way the light filters through the leaves. You can almost feel the quiet of the garden. Notice the tree on the left. It is just lines, but those lines, so descriptive, the hatching and cross-hatching making up the tree's textures. Moulijn isn’t just showing us what he saw, he’s showing us how he saw it, how he built this castle and garden up for himself. It makes me think of other artists who find beauty in the everyday, like Fairfield Porter with his paintings of his house, or Bonnard. It is so cool how art invites us to see the world in new ways, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.