Most pictures invite you to lean in for a closer look. Johannes Fijt’s drawing of a spaniel shaking itself dry makes you stand well back. It’s so real you can practically feel the spray. The skin and hair around the dog’s face pull taut with the force of movement. It’s a triumph of observation, capturing exactly the satisfied, exultant shudder of a dog just out of water, and of memory, because however fast Fijt could sketch, no man can sketch as fast as a spaniel can shake.
Next to Fijt’s dog in the Ashmolean Museum’s Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings is an immaculate drawing of an earthworm by an anonymous south Netherlandish artist. If the spaniel sketch shivers with energy, the earthworm oozes with
