Ornamentstudier med farveangivelser 1906

Niels Larsen Stevns made this ornament study with color notations, using pencil and watercolor on graph paper. It's a peek into his sketchbook, right? I can imagine him hunched over this little study, maybe in a train carriage, playing with shapes and colors in a world obsessed with ornament. I mean, he's working out color schemes, probably for a larger project. Look at the way he’s laid out the geometric patterns, a vertical stack of motifs, it's so playful. The grid gives structure, but the hand-painted quality introduces a wobble that I find really appealing. There’s one, a kind of zig-zag, where he’s noted in the margin the color. He's thinking, planning, but also letting the hand lead. Stevns probably looked at historic sources – Romanesque or Byzantine? – and abstracted them, made them his own. Artists are always looking back, aren’t they? It's like we're all in this big conversation across time, borrowing, stealing, and transforming each other's ideas. This little sketch feels so immediate, so full of potential.