Gezicht op Dordrecht 1907

This pencil sketch of Dordrecht was made by Alexander Shilling, July 19, 1907. The first thing I notice here is the freedom of the artist’s hand, how the marks create a world with very little information. It’s all about the immediacy of the experience. The texture created by the pencil on paper is interesting – you can see the different pressures and directions of the strokes. Look at the way the artist defines the buildings and the windmill with simple lines, suggesting form and depth with very few details. Especially the windmill, which is built up of these dark, decisive vertical marks. It's like Shilling is building a language from the ground up. It reminds me a bit of some quick landscape sketches by Van Gogh, where the energy of the moment is captured with just a few lines. There's a beauty in the simplicity and directness of this kind of work. It shows us how much can be conveyed with so little, and how art is often more about asking questions than providing answers.