Gezicht op Haarlem, gezien vanuit het Haarlemmerhoutpark 1916

This is ‘Gezicht op Haarlem, gezien vanuit het Haarlemmerhoutpark’ by Paulus Nicolaas van Alff, who made it at some point in his life, using I’m guessing some kind of printmaking technique. I find myself getting lost in the textures here; the water is rendered with these horizontal lines, creating a sense of movement and reflection. The trees and buildings in the background are built up with these tiny, delicate strokes, like a pointillist painting but with lines instead of dots. It's like watching someone knit a whole landscape together, stitch by stitch. And then you have the sailboat, smack-dab in the middle, its sail a reddish-brown that pops against the muted tones of the water and sky. It's the anchor of the whole piece, literally and visually. In this work I'm reminded of, say, Édouard Vuillard, who also just had this knack for finding the extraordinary in the everyday. It's all about how we see and what we choose to focus on.