Studier af en græshoppe 1906 - 1910

Niels Larsen Stevns made these studies of a grasshopper with pencil on paper, and what strikes me is the immediacy of the marks. You can sense him figuring out the angles, the segmented body, like a little mechanical thing. The paper itself is soft, almost absorbent looking, which gives the pencil lines a subtle blur, nothing is hard-edged, it all melts a little. Look at the antennae, how they flick and curve, these small details give life to the whole page. It’s not just about accuracy; it’s about capturing a sense of movement and being alive to possibilities. The insect here is a prompt, a reason to get started. I see echoes of someone like Leonardo da Vinci in these studies, or maybe even some of the German Renaissance masters. It’s that same curiosity, that same desire to understand the world through drawing, through observation. Art is always talking to itself, across time, across cultures, and it’s never really finished.