Road to Cattiruje (?) (from Sketchbook) 1904

Mary Newbold Sargent took pencil in hand to make this drawing, ‘Road to Cattiruje (?)’ in the late nineteenth century. I imagine her standing on the roadside, trying to capture the Italian landscape, the road rising up and away in front of her. The marks are like musical notations: see how her pencil moves up the slope, zigging and zagging back and forth, layering lines to build form. The whole thing feels immediate, like she’s trying to get it all down quickly, before the light changes or a donkey cart comes along. There’s a real sense of place in this modest sketch, those dark, shadowed patches giving depth to the rockface. The landscape is reduced to its barest elements; this isn't about perfection, it's about feeling. I think of Sargent alongside other artists like Emily Carr, who also used drawing to record their experiences of place. Artists are always in dialogue with each other, finding new ways to see and express the world around them.