Figuren op het strand c. 1920

Johan Antonie de Jonge made Figuren op het strand with pencil or charcoal; you can see the smudgy, soft marks all over the page. I love that you can see the process so clearly – it’s like watching him think. The muted palette and the way the forms seem to emerge from the ground make the beach feel like a liminal space, a meeting place between land and sea, reality and imagination. Look at the marks suggesting figures on the beach; they're not tightly defined but exist as clumps of tone, dark and light. They're almost like musical notation; a series of notations that describe a feeling, not a specific person. The way de Jonge handles tone reminds me of some of the early modernists, like James Ensor. Both artists were really interested in the relationship between perception and representation. They suggest that there's always more than one way to see the world.