Molen in een landschap 1910 - 1917

Alexander Shilling made this pencil sketch of a windmill in a landscape, in what looks like a page from a sketchbook. What strikes me about this piece is the lightness of touch. Shilling isn't trying to capture every detail, but rather give us a sense of place and atmosphere. Look at the way he uses hatching to create shadows and volume, especially around the windmill itself. It's almost as if the image is emerging from the page, a fleeting impression caught in graphite. The texture is also important here. You can almost feel the roughness of the paper, the way the pencil skitters across its surface. And there’s a real contrast between the dense, dark strokes of the mill, and the soft, hazy rendering of the landscape around it. It reminds me a little of Turner, in its focus on light and atmosphere, and its willingness to let form dissolve into abstraction.