Huizen aan een gracht c. 1897 - 1910

This sketch of houses along a canal was made by Willem Witsen with pencil on paper. It's so sparse, like a memory. You know when you’re trying to describe a dream to someone, but the details just keep slipping away? That's what this reminds me of. The marks are so tentative, a dance between the seen and the imagined, like Witsen is feeling his way through the scene. Look at the way the buildings are rendered with these quick, almost shaky lines. There’s this vulnerability in the mark-making. It reminds me of Cy Twombly's scribbles, but with a melancholic whisper instead of a shout. What's great about a drawing like this is how it embraces the incomplete. It's not about capturing reality, but about capturing a feeling, an atmosphere. It celebrates the beauty of imperfection and the poetry of suggestion.