Badende børn på stranden 1904 - 1906

Fritz Syberg made this drawing of bathing children on the beach with ink on paper. It looks like a sketch, a quick impression made in the moment. Syberg seems to embrace the kind of directness that comes with a simple medium. Look at the two figures on the left, how they are built up with a few, confident lines, a mass of scribbled lines suggesting shadow between them. These lines, they aren’t too precious, they just want to capture the feeling of the subject. In the water, those other figures are barely there at all, and somehow that gives you such a sense of light reflecting off the water, of the way things dissolve in bright sunlight. Syberg's work reminds me of Paula Modersohn-Becker, another artist who found beauty in everyday scenes. They both had this way of making the ordinary feel special, like they were letting you in on a little secret. Ultimately, it is the feeling of lived experience that makes art so moving and enduring.