Weidelandschap met bomen

Willem Bastiaan Tholen made this drawing of a meadow landscape with trees sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century, using a soft pencil on paper. The lines are tentative and exploratory, a real sense of the artist feeling his way into the scene. The paper itself is lined, like a notebook page, which gives the drawing an informal, immediate quality. Look at the way Tholen uses hatching and cross-hatching to create a sense of depth and texture, especially in the dense foliage at the bottom right. You can almost feel the softness of the grass and the rough bark of the trees. There's a vulnerability to the drawing, like a fleeting impression captured on the spot. I am reminded of the drawings of Van Gogh, who also had a very distinctive approach to rendering the landscape with expressive mark-making. Ultimately, it's not about precision, but about conveying a feeling, an atmosphere. And that's what makes it so compelling.