Gezicht op een dorpje met kerk verscholen achter enkele bomen 1872 - 1939

Egbert Rubertus Derk Schaap made this drawing of a village with a church hidden behind trees with graphite and white chalk. The drawing is really about seeing, and how much you can suggest with so little. The texture is very subtle, built up from multiple light layers of graphite. Look how the artist builds up the density of the trees around the church, using thin lines that imply form and volume without ever fully defining it. There's this sense of atmospheric perspective, like you're looking through a haze. See those scrawled lines that run across the lower part of the artwork; they're not trying to depict anything specific, but they suggest a kind of ground, or maybe just the idea of a foreground. Nothing is definite. It's as if Schaap is saying, "Here’s a feeling of a place, not a literal transcription." It reminds me of Corot, capturing the feeling of a landscape with a few gestures, hinting at the poetry of a place through the simplest of means. And that's kind of beautiful, isn't it?