Zeilboten voor de kust van Domburg 1907

Jan Toorop made this small drawing of sailboats off the coast of Domburg with pencil in 1904. I love how he uses the colored pencil to give the sea its shimmering, almost vibrating quality. You can really feel the hand of the artist in the work, those quick marks full of life. There's something about the way he’s rendered the water with horizontal lines that feels both simple and incredibly effective. Like, you know exactly what water looks like, right? But then you see it distilled into these basic strokes, and it's like he's unlocked a secret code. There's also a playful quality with the windmills in the background, they almost look like they are moving. Toorop was a real innovator, always experimenting with different styles. You can see echoes of artists like Seurat in his pointillist phase, but then he also dabbled in symbolism and Art Nouveau. For me, it's like seeing art as one big conversation, with artists borrowing, responding to, and riffing off each other's ideas across time.