Landschap met bruggetjes in weilanden 1873 - 1932

This landscape with little bridges in meadows was drawn with graphite on paper by Wilhelmus Johannes Steenhoff. Look at these marks, they are so tentative! Like the artist is thinking with the pencil, trying to find the essence of the scene, the underlying structure. I can imagine him outside, sitting in the grass, squinting at the light. The artist is really trying to capture the light filtering through the scene, how it defines the forms and shapes within it. There's this amazing dialogue happening between what's there, and what's not there—the negative space kind of becomes as important as the marks. It is like he wants to leave room for the landscape to breathe, to allow the viewer to fill in the blanks. It makes me think about how every artist is in conversation with the world around them, trying to make sense of it all through mark-making, through observation, through the sheer act of trying.