Skitsebog med studier af dyr samt landskaber 1900 - 1905

This sketchbook page with studies of animals and landscapes was created by Niels Larsen Stevns. Here we see quick, searching lines sketching out animal forms. I love the directness of these sketches, the way each line feels like a question, a probe into the essence of the subject. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the page, trying to capture the fleeting gestures of these creatures. The landscape elements seem to emerge from the same impulse, a desire to understand and record the world through the immediacy of drawing. Was Stevns thinking about other sketchbooks by Delacroix or Daumier? I wonder if he was looking to them. These kinds of marks are a conversation with art history. It reminds me that painting, at its core, is about this kind of searching, this kind of intimate engagement with the world. Each artist's mark contributes to an ongoing exploration of what it means to see, feel, and be.