Gebouwen aan het water 1909

Johan Antonie de Jonge made this landscape with what looks like a stick of graphite, smudging and hatching to build up the forms. It’s all about process, a kind of visual thinking. Looking at the surface, you can see how the graphite has a dry, almost powdery texture. The way the artist uses these diagonal lines and smudges makes me think of the quick, on-the-spot sketches that Constable did of clouds, but here they form houses and water, all flowing into one another. Notice the bottom left corner, where the shading dissolves into almost nothing, a kind of ghostly smudge. De Jonge was a contemporary of Piet Mondrian, and although this is a more conventional landscape than the later abstractions Mondrian became known for, you can see in this work a similar interest in the basic elements of composition, the lines and shapes from which we construct our experience of the world. The sketch feels open, like an invitation to join the artist in discovering the landscape.