Scheveningen, Gezicht op Strand, Wandelhoofd en Noordzee Possibly 1911 - 1918

Weenenk & Snel made this small picture of Scheveningen, looking out at the beach and North Sea, on what feels like a found piece of card. The surface has a funny kind of glow to it, doesn’t it? Everything’s covered in a kind of beige-y light, like the world has been filtered through a sepia lens. It looks like it was made with thin washes, one on top of the other, like a watercolour almost. Look how the white of the card shines through in the sky. There is a slight blurring of the edges, as if the artist wanted to capture a fleeting moment, or a memory. The way the whole thing is laid out, the way the pier stretches out into the water, it reminds me of James Ensor, how he piles up the figures in his paintings, all those people on the beach kind of merge into one big mass. It’s like the artists are saying, “Hey, look at this place, it’s full of life and energy, even if we can’t quite put our finger on what’s going on”. Art is always in conversation, you know?