Duinlandschap Possibly 1908

Alexander Shilling made this landscape drawing with graphite, and it shows a real sensitivity to light. It's like he's feeling his way through the landscape. What grabs me here is the texture, that's created by all those tiny marks made by the pencil. Look closely at the way Shilling shades the sky, or the ground. See how the marks aren’t uniform. They have a kind of messy, almost chaotic energy that you can almost feel, like a weather system. It gives the drawing a depth and complexity that you wouldn't expect from such a simple medium. There’s a kind of lightness in the way it’s handled that feels very modern. This reminds me a little bit of Cezanne, who also used simple means to represent complex things. And like Cezanne, Shilling embraces the ambiguity of the drawing. It's not about creating a perfect representation of reality, but about capturing the essence of the landscape.