Studie af husgavl 1900 - 1904

Niels Larsen Stevns made this graphite sketch called Studie af husgavl, or Study of a House Gable, sometime in his lifetime. It looks like he was really working it out, right? Like he was thinking through the gable, the roofline, the geometry of a building—and also a flower on the left page—with his pencil, trying to figure out how it all fits together, pushing and pulling forms. You can see the ghost of lines where he’s changed his mind, or was perhaps thinking of other angles. I really feel for him, you know? Like he’s got this idea in his head but he’s gotta get it down on paper, work it out in real time. It makes me think about Cezanne who was also working from observation, but pushing it towards abstraction. I wonder if Stevns was doing the same thing? Anyway, that’s the thing about painting and drawing, it's a conversation between the artist, the subject, and us. And it’s a conversation that keeps going and going.