Triomfbogen en ornamenten met een kop van een kat c. 1901

This is a drawing by Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof, made with pencil, of triumphal arches and ornaments, featuring a cat’s head. Look at how the lines are tentative, searching, like the artist is thinking through the form as he draws. It shows the messy, thoughtful process of artmaking, which is something I’m always interested in! The drawing feels like a study, maybe for a larger project. Dijsselhof is clearly interested in texture; even with just pencil, he manages to suggest the rough surface of stone. There’s a playfulness, too, in the way he combines the formal architecture with the whimsical cat motif. There’s a cat face in a square near the bottom of the sketch. Look how it’s neatly framed, yet the cat's expression is so wonderfully ambiguous. Is it stern? Amused? It reminds me a bit of the cats in Fernand Léger’s paintings—a similar blend of geometric form and feline charm. Ultimately, it speaks to art's endless capacity for reinvention and reinterpretation.