Landscape with a bridge and cows 1920

Tadeusz Makowski made this painting, Landscape with a Bridge and Cows, at some point in his career using what looks like quite a dry brush. I love how he's built the image from a series of marks, loosely layering to suggest a deeper scene. Look at how the muddy browns and greens of the foreground are built up from individual strokes of pure colour. The paint application seems really intuitive, creating a kind of shorthand for the forms he's depicting; a bridge, some cows, a figure in a landscape. It feels like the process is really important, like he's letting the painting show you how it was made, rather than trying to hide the evidence. There’s a looseness in the way Makowski approaches the scene that reminds me of some of Chaim Soutine's landscapes. Both artists seem to be working at speed, trying to capture a feeling or mood, rather than a literal representation. But with Makowski, despite the freedom of the marks, there's also a real sense of structure, a firm compositional backbone. It's a beautiful balance of spontaneity and control.