Ontwerp voor een glas in loodraam met een paard en leeuw 1896 - 1934

Jaap Weyand made this design for a stained glass window with colored pencil. You know, with drawing, it’s all about laying down marks, building the image through layering, and here you can see Weyand planning out the structure of the piece, working out how all the separate bits will fit together. The texture is really interesting; all those visible strokes of colored pencil. You can almost feel the roughness of the paper and the soft, crumbly quality of the pigment. Notice how the bold outlines of the horse and lion contrast with the more delicate geometric patterns around them. It's like Weyand is creating a sense of depth and movement, as if the two animals are bursting out from the surface. See how the composition is balanced, yet the energy is anything but static? It puts me in mind of Franz Marc’s paintings of brightly colored horses, but Weyand brings a whole different sensibility to the work, like a decorative take on German Expressionism. It’s a reminder that art is just a conversation, a constant reinterpretation of the world around us.