Voor een kar gespannen trekpaard 1890 - 1946

Cornelis Vreedenburgh drew this study of a horse pulling a cart with graphite on paper. Look closely and you'll see how the looseness and the speed of the marks give the impression of movement. There's a kind of joy in the economy of the line, especially in the horse's head – you can almost feel Vreedenburgh’s hand zipping across the page. It's all about suggestion, not description. Notice how certain areas are more heavily worked, like the shading on the horse’s body, versus the almost diagrammatic rendering of the cart. It’s like he’s saying, "Okay, I got the gist of it, now let's move on." You can see this approach in the work of other Dutch painters like Anton Mauve, who used a similar gestural approach to capture fleeting impressions of the landscape. Ultimately, it's about embracing imperfection, and finding beauty in the unfinished.