Band met een floraal motief c. 1901

Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof made this floral motif band with graphite on paper. You know, there's something really appealing about the immediacy of a sketch like this. It's all about capturing a feeling, an impression. Check out the looping lines that form the floral shapes. They’re not precise, but they have this energy, right? It’s like you can almost see the artist's hand moving across the page. The smudgy areas add to that sense of process. It's like Dijsselhof is showing you how he sees, how he thinks through drawing. There is an almost Art Nouveau feel to the curves, something that makes me think of the work of Aubrey Beardsley, though maybe a bit less precious. What links them both is this sense of the drawn line as an entity in itself, something that can be both representational and decorative at the same time. It's a reminder that art doesn't always have to be polished. Sometimes, the rough edges are where the real magic happens.