Landschap met bomen en struiken 1890 - 1946

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this landscape drawing of trees and bushes with pencil on paper. The mark making here is really interesting - see how he uses these dense, scribbled lines to build up the form of the trees? There’s something very immediate and process-oriented about that. It's like he’s thinking through the act of drawing. The texture created by the pencil feels almost velvety in the darker areas, especially in contrast to the bare paper used to suggest the clouds. I love the way he suggests the form of the foliage, but look closely and you’ll see that the tree becomes an almost abstract mass. Vreedenburgh, like other landscape artists such as Jacob Maris, seems to embrace ambiguity here. It’s not about a perfect representation, but more like a feeling or a memory of a place. He invites us to see the world through his eyes.