Landschap, met op de achtergrond een huis 1903

H. Bachmann made this small landscape drawing, with a house in the background, using what looks like graphite. The light is soft, the touch is light, and everything is kind of blurry and smudgy. The texture of the paper comes through. It gives the work an ethereal, mysterious quality. I imagine Bachmann outside, maybe with a sketchbook on their lap, capturing a scene that caught their eye. What were they thinking about while drawing? Did they live in the house? Did they know the people who did? Maybe this was a daily ritual for them, finding solace in nature, marking the passing of time. There’s a tree looming in the foreground, which reminds me of Symbolist landscapes. The house is secondary to the trees that dominate the composition. Artists are constantly borrowing and learning from one another across time. It’s all one big conversation, and it’s never over.