Centraal station te Amsterdam 1902

Carel Nicolaas Storm van 's-Gravesande made this drawing of Amsterdam Centraal Station using what looks like graphite or charcoal. What I love about a drawing like this is that it reveals artmaking as a process. It’s all there on the surface, the rubbed marks, the erasures, and those smudges that give the buildings a ghostly, dreamlike quality. The texture is really beautiful; you can almost feel the grain of the paper beneath the charcoal. The artist uses these dark, smudgy strokes to create a sense of atmosphere. Look at the water, how those vertical strokes create the impression of reflections and movement. The tiny touches of yellow and red bring it to life. It reminds me a little of Whistler’s nocturnes, those hazy, atmospheric landscapes. But where Whistler goes for a kind of refined elegance, this feels more immediate, more raw. It’s a sketch, a moment captured in time, and in that, there’s a real sense of honesty. The beauty of art is that it can be both things at once.