Ruiter en een knielende figuur 1914 - 1919

Willem Cornelis Rip made this sketch of a horse rider and a kneeling figure with graphite, in what looks like a notebook. I love the way he has used a kind of shorthand to get these figures down on paper. The rider looms over the kneeling figure in an act of ambiguous significance, one could only imagine the story behind this scene... Maybe the figure is beseeching the rider for help. I'm always fascinated by how artists use a few marks to suggest a world of meaning and feeling; here Rip captures a sense of place with a few horizontal lines and some scribbled hatching. These marks feel intuitive and unlabored. Rip's sketchbook page reminds me of similar sketches by artists like Daumier or Degas, who were also interested in capturing fleeting moments of everyday life through line and tone. Each artist is in conversation with those who came before, riffing on ideas and approaches across generations. And in the end, that's what keeps painting alive.