Palmboom Possibly 1920 - 1924

Willem Witsen made this pencil drawing of a palm tree, we don't know exactly when, but it is now at the Rijksmuseum. Look at the trunk, how it tapers so simply, yet so suggestively. I imagine Witsen standing in front of this tree, feeling the heat, the breeze maybe, and trying to capture its essence with quick, confident strokes. It's like he’s having a conversation with the tree, a dance of looking and responding. The leaves are like scribbles, nervous and alive, all radiating from the center. You can almost feel the scratch of the pencil on the paper. It reminds me of other landscape artists like Van Gogh, who tried to draw nature as if they were possessed. Artists are always looking at each other, borrowing, stealing, and transforming what they see, aren’t they?