Hagedis Possibly 1920 - 1924

Willem Witsen drew this little lizard in pencil, in a sketchbook, sometime in his life between 1860 and 1923. It's so delicate, isn't it? Like a fleeting thought captured on paper. Look at how he uses line, sometimes thick, sometimes barely there, to give the lizard shape and weight. The tail, especially, has this lovely tapering quality, like it’s dissolving into the page. You can almost feel the texture of the paper, the way the pencil catches on the surface. There’s something so intimate about sketchbook drawings. They're not meant to be perfect or finished, they're more like a record of a moment, a glimpse into the artist's process. This reminds me a little of Matisse's line drawings, where he could convey so much with so little. Art, after all, is just one big conversation, stretching across time. And that's what makes it so endlessly fascinating, right?