Plantestudier 1906 - 1910

Niels Larsen Stevns made this plant study, with ink on paper. What’s fascinating here is the interplay between observation and expression; the crisp lines that capture the forms of the plant, set against the sketch-like hatching within the leaves. Look at the way the ink sits on the page, some areas are dense and dark, while others are just light, tentative strokes. You can almost feel Stevns figuring out the structure of the plant as he goes, erasing and refining with the pen. Check out the lower flower, there's a really simple openness there, and it acts as a kind of key for how to read the whole page. This reminds me a little of Matisse's line drawings, though with a distinctly Scandinavian sensibility. In the end, it's about seeing the world anew, isn’t it? Finding beauty in the simplest of forms and sharing that vision with others.