Rivierlandschap met molen bij Dordrecht 1888 - 1889

Curator: Looking at Alexander Shilling's "River Landscape with Mill near Dordrecht," likely sketched between 1888 and 1889, you get an immediate sense of...well, a quickly captured moment. Editor: Hmmm... the scribbled, almost urgent quality certainly grabs your attention. There's a kind of semiotic urgency – like the artist felt a compulsion to reduce Dordrecht to its key visual signs. Windmill, river, boats... almost a child's drawing. Curator: Except a child wouldn’t render light and shadow like this, or give such weight to the reflections in the water. To me, it suggests someone trying to distill the essence of a place they know well, warts and all, and doing so in what appears to be a small notebook sketch. The perspective’s a little wonky. But then, life’s perspective often is. Editor: I'm interested in the lines themselves. Notice the density and direction: Short, dark hatching to suggest volume in the mill and boats. Long, wavering strokes give us movement in the water, barely-there sketches to intimate clouds, I suppose, in the sky. How do these linear patterns create meaning beyond mere representation? Curator: It feels like Shilling didn't want to idealize Dordrecht. Maybe the drawing embodies a deep connection to this specific place at a particular time. Like how you can almost smell the brackish water or feel the wind coming off the river, right? Editor: Agreed. It’s less about perfect rendering and more about that sensory recall. And it succeeds. It feels…unfinished. The piece shows you just how many layers there are between reality and its expression; the way these simple lines are not exactly representative of the things they depict, they only offer an impression that gets more complete, or accurate, when viewed from a distance. Curator: Like life itself. Up close, it’s all scribbles and uncertain lines. Editor: And viewed from far away—full of wind, river and time! Curator: Perfect, let's move on.