Blanco handtekeningenblad met zwanen 1884 - 1952

Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries made this Blanco handtekeningenblad met zwanen, or blank signature sheet with swans, using graphite, gouache, and possibly some gold paint too. It is, in essence, a kind of drawing, and I love to think about drawing as a process, one with an innate sense of freedom, you know? The surface is predominantly this lovely, muted grey, like a cloudy sky just after the rain, and against that, the geometric shapes almost float – they’re so lightly colored. This pale palette gives the piece a quiet feel, a calm and collected sort of composition. But it’s the swans that grab me. They’re so stylized, and that blue outline is just perfect. You can almost see how De Vries might have been moving his hand, nice and steady, pulling that line along the page. De Vries was a decorative artist, a designer, and his work frequently includes images from nature like this. Maybe Klimt or Schiele are artists with a similar sensibility, but De Vries’ more muted color palette gives his work a totally different feeling, don't you think?