Drawing for the Primer_ Mouse c. 1905

Hans Thoma made this drawing of a mouse for a primer, but there is nothing childish or innocent about the way he's drawn it. The drawing is spare, made with lines, and there is no attempt to make it real. It's more like a diagram of a mouse – a mouse-idea. I love the way he's used a kind of cross-hatching to describe the volume of the mouse's body. Like he's building it up with layers and layers of tiny, nervous marks. And the floor it's standing on! It's like a stage, or a prison, made of these very controlled, rigid lines. That tail! It's the only thing that seems to have any freedom. It's a little flourish, a little joke, in an otherwise pretty serious drawing. It's a reminder that art is always a conversation, a back-and-forth between control and chaos.