Sketches of Rowboat and Figure Standing in a Rowboat (from Sketchbook)
Original title: Sketches of Rowboat and Figure Standing in a Rowboat (from Sketchbook)
kurzbeschreibung
Around 1891 Albert Bierstadt filled this sketchbook page with several rowboats, and in one of them a figure stands upright. The drawing is in graphite on wove paper whose edges are gilded, and the sheet is bound in a leather cover.
Description
Boats appear across the page, each seen from a different angle and carried to a different degree of finish; some are fully drawn, others only hinted at. A figure stands in one of the boats, set down in a few strokes and almost like a sign. The lines stay loose and unpolished, with no colour and no modelling light effects at all.
Context
Bierstadt, best known for his landscapes of the American West, made this drawing late in life. Artists used sketchbooks as a portable tool for noting motifs on the move and preparing ideas for pictures. This page belongs to a sketchbook now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Impact
The sketches come forward directly and spontaneously, as if a brief moment had been caught. Because everything is reduced to the essentials, the sheet takes on an almost calm, meditative mood, and the eye lingers on the simple shape of the boats and the figure.
Technique
Graphite on wove paper with gilded edges, bound in a leather cover, forms the basis. The loose, little-smoothed handling of the pencil points to quick, spontaneous work of the kind usual for sketches made as preliminary studies.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)