Studier af duer 1864 - 1941

Niels Larsen Stevns captured these studies of doves in a sketchbook, probably using graphite, and maybe sometime between 1864 and 1941. These doves are light and whispery, captured with the bare minimum of lines. I’m thinking about Stevns, sitting in a park, trying to capture these birds as they move. It's such a fleeting subject. You’d have to be really quick with your pencil, and really attuned to the way the light falls on the bird, how it moves, the tilt of its head. There's such a sense of fleetingness in the lightness of touch here; almost as if he doesn't want to disturb them. I like thinking about how artists teach themselves how to see and draw the world around them, and how other artists can learn from these explorations too. It's just the practice of seeing that matters: all the time building up an understanding of light and form.