Neva early in the morning 1922

This is Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva's 'Neva early in the morning', an artwork made using pencil on paper. It’s got this amazing quality of being both incredibly detailed and somehow spacious. The texture of the paper peeks through, giving everything a hazy, soft edge. You can almost feel the cool, damp air of the early morning. I love how she uses these tiny, precise lines to build up the forms of the buildings and the reflections on the water. Look at how dense and dark the shading is on the left side, and how it gradually fades out as you move across the river. That little patch of intense scribbling on the left feels like a burst of energy, anchoring the whole composition. It reminds me a little bit of Whistler's etchings, that same sense of quiet observation and understated beauty. But Ostroumova-Lebedeva brings her own sensibility to it, a kind of gentle, almost melancholic feeling. Art is like a conversation, right? Artists responding to each other, building on what came before, but always adding their own unique voice. And there’s always room for different voices, different ways of seeing and feeling.