Landschap met bebouwing en een koe 1909

This sketch, Landscape with Buildings and a Cow, by Johan Antonie de Jonge, probably made with charcoal, looks like a fleeting thought caught on paper. It's all about the immediacy of the mark. You can see the artist feeling their way through the scene. Look at how the cow is rendered—a few bold strokes give you the animal's bulk and weight. The lines are so alive, so full of energy. It’s like the artist is wrestling with the subject, trying to pin it down, but also letting it breathe. There's a wonderful tension between description and abstraction. Nothing is really delineated, but the suggestive power of the lines still conjures a sense of place, and the presence of the animals. There’s something of Van Gogh in here, perhaps; that same urgency of line. But this little sketch feels so different somehow, and so totally present in its own right. Art’s an ongoing conversation like that, isn't it?