Landschap met struik 1872 - 1939

Egbert Rubertus Derk Schaap made this landscape with a shrub with pencil, or maybe charcoal, it's hard to tell. It's a flurry of marks, isn't it? Almost like the artist was trying to capture a feeling more than a scene. I mean, look at how the shrub in the center is rendered. It’s not about perfect lines, but about the energy of growth, the way the branches reach out. The texture is everything here, isn't it? The way the pencil scratches across the paper, creating this dense, almost vibrating surface. And those dark patches, they anchor the whole thing, giving it weight, a sense of groundedness. It makes me think of other artists like Guston, who embraced the messy, the imperfect, the human touch. Art's a conversation, right? Schaap’s work here reminds us that it's okay to leave things unresolved, to embrace the ambiguity, to let the process be visible.