Paard en wagen op een straat 1890 - 1946

This sketch, "Paard en wagen op een straat," by Cornelis Vreedenburgh, probably was made en plein air, directly in front of the subject with graphite on paper. I imagine him quickly trying to capture what he saw, squinting his eyes and trying to capture the essence of what he was looking at. It is an evocative sketch of a horse and wagon on a street. Look at the dense hatching of the graphite, building up the tone, the energy, and the composition. You can almost feel the movement and texture of the scene. I can imagine Vreedenburgh wrestling with the blankness of the paper, trying to coax a sense of place and atmosphere with a limited range of marks and tones. Like any good artist, I bet he was in dialogue with other artists while he made this, and it would be interesting to know which ones. Each mark here is a record of a moment, a thought, a feeling, connecting him to us across time and space. It's an exchange of ideas through the language of art, where ambiguity and uncertainty invite our own interpretations.