Udsigt over klitter ved Harboøre 1921

Niels Bjerre made this pencil drawing, *Udsigt over klitter ved Harboøre,* whose title translates as *View Over Dunes at Harboøre,* presumably en plein air. I can imagine Bjerre out there on the beach, squinting at the sand and the sea, trying to capture the subtle light. There's something so immediate about drawings like this. You can almost feel the breeze and smell the salt in the air. The strokes of the pencil are like whispers, creating form and space with the minimum of fuss. It’s a quickly sketched impression of a place, and the date in the corner suggests that, for Bjerre, the day itself was worth noting down. Think of the drawing as a kind of notation, a simple, indexical mark with a life of its own. When we look at paintings we are in a dialogue with all the paintings that have come before. Bjerre is part of a chain of mark-making and seeing. It is like the best kind of conversation: it is never-ending and always surprising.