Singel te Utrecht 1875 - 1938

Leo Klein von Diepold made this gorgeous charcoal drawing of Singel te Utrecht. You can see how his hand moved – rapid, light, and a little obsessive – to make the scene appear and disappear at once. I feel a kinship with his quick, flickering strokes, and I wonder what he felt as he moved the charcoal across the paper. It looks like he really built up the surface in some areas to create a dense, velvety darkness and left the boats very linear and stark to create a contrast. I love how he captured the reflections in the water. They're almost more present than the boats themselves, like a ghostly echo, and he has a brilliant way of making the trees bleed into the sky and water, dissolving any sense of fixed form. I am in awe of how he has so economically created this atmospheric vision. We can see that this piece is part of an ongoing conversation between artists across time, each inspiring the other to keep looking, feeling, and making.