Studieblad met paard onder een boom en een man spelend op een trompet onder een boom, vergezeld door twee ezels 1891 - 1941

Leo Gestel made this study sheet with pencil, showing a horse under a tree and a man with a trumpet under a tree, accompanied by two donkeys. There’s a kind of lightness to these sketches, a suggestion of form without being too rigid. You can almost feel the pencil moving across the page, searching, finding. The texture of the paper comes through, becoming part of the image itself. Look at the way the tree's form in the lower image is built up with soft, almost cloud-like strokes. It’s less about the tree, and more about Gestel’s process. It's as though he's saying, "Here’s an idea of a tree, not the definitive tree itself." Gestel's work reminds me a little of Redon’s dreamscapes, where the line between reality and imagination blurs. It is that sense of openness, that invitation to wander and wonder, that makes art so endlessly fascinating. It's a reminder that art isn’t about answers, but about the ongoing conversation.