Strandgezicht te Scheveningen 1889 - 1949

Pieter Willem van Baarsel made this beach scene in Scheveningen as a drawing. What I notice about this piece is that everything seems to be made up of little lines. It’s like the whole world is made from these individual marks, and it’s hard to tell where one thing starts and another ends. The color palette is super limited, just shades of gray, but somehow it captures the feeling of a cloudy day at the beach. You can almost feel the dampness in the air. The beach chair is very interesting. It’s hard to tell if the chair is solid, or if it is dissolving into the sand. The little marks become the structure. You know, this drawing reminds me a little bit of the work of James Ensor. Both artists have this way of making the ordinary seem a little bit strange, a little bit unsettling. And in the end, ambiguity is embraced over definitive meanings.