Udkast til "Kristus helbreder en spedalsk" 1937 - 1938

This pencil sketch on graph paper is a study by Niels Larsen Stevns for his painting “Christ Healing the Leper.” I just love seeing the bare bones of a composition like this. It's like getting a peek inside the artist's mind. You can almost feel Stevns working out the logistics of his composition. I imagine him hunched over the page, brow furrowed in concentration, moving figures around and playing with the spatial relationships. The grid adds such an interesting tension to the gestural marks and lines. It’s like he's trying to impose order on chaos, or maybe find the divine within it. Seeing this makes me realize that every great painting starts with a little bit of searching. Every artist is on their own journey, grappling with the same questions, and learning from those who came before.