Panorama Landscape of Nebi Samouel (from Sketchbook) 1904

This is a pencil landscape of Nebi Samouel from a sketchbook by Mary Newbold Sargent. What strikes me first is the simplicity of the marks. It’s like she's thinking through the landscape with her pencil. There’s a real sense of immediacy here, a direct translation of what she saw, but also how she felt in that moment. The lines are tentative, searching, almost like she’s feeling her way through the scene. Look at the way she's rendered the stone wall on the left – a series of quick, parallel lines that capture its rough texture. You can almost feel the weight of the stones, the way they’ve been stacked together over time. And then, in the distance, those soft, undulating hills, rendered with such delicate, almost hesitant lines. It reminds me a bit of Agnes Martin, in the way she used simple, repetitive marks to create a sense of space and atmosphere. Sargent is clearly part of this ongoing conversation about how we see, how we feel, and how we translate those experiences into art. It’s all about the journey, the process, the never-ending exploration of what it means to be human.