Gezicht op Orsoy, 1672 1900 - 1903

The brothers Moreau made this pen drawing of Orsoy in 1672, and it’s all about the process of seeing and recording, one line at a time. There’s something so delicate about the surface. It's like they are trying to catch a ghost of a memory. The pencil lines are so faint, creating the buildings and landscape with a kind of shy precision. Look at the way they rendered the water: horizontal lines, rippling ever so slightly, reflecting the sky. It’s as if they are trying to pin down something fleeting, the way light hits a surface for a single moment. The drawing feels so immediate, like they were standing right there, sketching as fast as they could. This reminds me a bit of some of Agnes Martin’s subtle line drawings, even though they’re centuries apart. It’s a testament to how artists, across time, keep grappling with the same questions of how to see, how to feel, and how to translate that onto a surface.