Landschap, mogelijk een duinlandschap 1909

Johan Antonie de Jonge made this landscape, possibly a dune landscape, in graphite, and it feels like he was really thinking through drawing. The material aspects here are all about the grain of the paper and the pressure of the pencil. It’s a quick sketch, but look at the tree on the left, made up of layers of diagonal marks, capturing the essence of its form with incredible economy. There are also words scattered across the page, almost as if the artist is annotating his own thought process. The scribbled lines in the foreground are looser. Are they attempts to map out the space? It feels like an artist grappling with the basics, in real time, as if the process is the whole point, and that kind of honesty is what makes this piece so appealing. This makes me think of Twombly and how he was a more contemporary and abstract artist. They both have similar playful sensibilities, and make us reflect on how we see.