Road in the Marches c. 1911

Muirhead Bone made "Road in the Marches," a drawing, and I’m looking at how he made marks to create a landscape. There’s this lovely, soft quality to the whole thing, a tonal range that's so subtle. But then, zoom in, and you see the scratchy, almost nervous lines, especially in the trees. They're not just trees, they're alive with this energy, like Bone is trying to capture not just what they look like, but how they feel, standing there in the wind. I love how the road itself is just a few simple strokes, but it totally works, it recedes into the distance, drawing you in. Bone reminds me a little of Whistler, in the sense of paring things back to their essence, finding beauty in the everyday. But Bone has a restlessness, a kind of searching quality that’s all his own. Ultimately, this is about the quiet beauty of a simple scene, transformed by the hand of someone who really saw it.