Landschap met een huis en molen 1907

Willem Cornelis Rip made this landscape with graphite. I love the immediacy of it. It feels like he was trying to capture a fleeting moment. Imagine him standing in the field, quickly sketching the scene before the light changed or the clouds moved on. There's a real sense of energy in those marks. The texture is rough and uneven, and the sky is evoked with these nervous hatching marks. Did Rip want to capture the vastness of the landscape, or the feeling of being there, in that moment? You know, artists are always in conversation with each other, across time. Looking at this sketch, I can't help but think of other artists who have tried to capture the essence of a place, like Van Gogh, or Constable. Maybe they were all chasing the same thing: a way to make paint stand in for experience. It’s so satisfying when a work lets you enter into it.