Rups op een tak 1887 - 1924

Julie de Graag made this small drawing of a caterpillar on a branch with pen and ink on paper, but when? It’s hard to say! There is a deceptive simplicity to the image, as if it were dashed off quickly, yet the sureness of line and the careful arrangement of the composition suggest otherwise. I love how De Graag's marks are both descriptive and expressive. The caterpillar is delineated with crisp, clean lines, but there is also a kind of squiggling that adds to its heft and texture, bringing it to life. The drawing has a tactile quality. You can almost feel the rough texture of the branch and the soft, segmented body of the caterpillar. I’m drawn to the loose hatching and scribbled shading above the insect. It’s like a ghost of the thing to come! De Graag’s contemporary, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, also made many drawings of insects. Both artists seemed to find in these tiny creatures a kind of formal challenge, and a way to explore the relationship between observation and imagination. It’s clear that for both artists art wasn’t about perfect representation, but about finding new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.