Vilna. The old manor house on Tilto Street. 1910

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky made 'Vilna. The old manor house on Tilto Street' with watercolour, and you can see how the medium itself seems to evoke a sense of memory and nostalgia. Look at the way Dobuzhinsky renders the rooftops with these washes of red, almost like faded memories. There’s something melancholic in the way the colours blend, as if time itself is dissolving the edges. The texture of the paper peeks through, giving the painting a light and airy quality. See that little figure pushing a wheelbarrow? It's almost as if it could be a ghost, or a memory. I think of someone like Edward Hopper, who also captured the melancholic beauty of urban life. But where Hopper is stark and precise, Dobuzhinsky is soft and dreamlike. Both artists, in their own ways, explore how places carry the weight of history. And perhaps it's in the ambiguity, in what's left unsaid, that the real magic lies.