Skitse af dyreskelet 1864 - 1941

Niels Larsen Stevns made this drawing of an animal skeleton with pencil, at an unknown date. The lines are soft, blurry and smudgy, all rendered in a mid-tone gray, it's as though Stevns is feeling out the form of the skeleton, in a kind of artistic seance. There's a looseness and fluidity in the layering of lines that really speaks to the process of discovery. It's like Stevns is allowing the drawing to emerge gradually, not forcing it into being. You can see erasures and redrawn lines, especially around the rib cage area, giving us a glimpse into the artist's thought process as he seeks to capture the animal's essence. Looking at the lower legs, each bone is denoted by a tiny perpendicular stroke, I imagine this was a way for the artist to measure out the space of each bone. His contemporary, Edvard Munch, was similarly interested in our mortality, so this piece feels related to the wider conversation about art and the human condition at that time. There are no fixed meanings here, just an invitation to contemplate life and death, as Stevns did.