Grazend dier en koppen van een dier c. 1916

Reijer Stolk made this pencil sketch of a grazing animal and its head, here in the Rijksmuseum. It looks like the artist was trying to work out the essence of the animal. I know this feeling well. You’re trying to get to the heart of something. You have to really look, then you have to be bold and go in there, but lightly, and with some speed! There's something very vulnerable in the way the animal’s head bows down to eat, isn’t there? I imagine Stolk rapidly moving his hand across the paper, feeling the form of the horse emerge from the page. These sketches remind me of Daumier’s drawings, which have the same sense of searching for the inner life of a figure. It's like he's in conversation with all the artists who have tried to capture animals throughout history. He’s seeing what they saw, then trying to see something new. What do you see?