Landschap met bomen c. 1909s

Alexander Shilling made this landscape with trees in a sketchbook, with what looks like a graphite pencil. I love how Shilling used the double page spread, and activated the whole surface. The tree on the left is almost a complete abstraction, a kind of scribble that suggests the essence of a tree rather than its detail. On the right, we see a more skeletal depiction. What I notice are the marks, the lines that build up the forms. The density of the shading on the left creates a soft, almost hazy effect, while the sparser lines on the right have a more immediate, raw feel. The way he's captured the texture of the bark, using these hatching techniques, reminds me a little of some of Cezanne's drawings. But it also feels very personal, this quiet observation. This piece feels like a conversation between the artist and the natural world, filtered through the hand and the eye. It's like a visual diary entry, a fleeting moment captured in graphite.