Buffetkast met mand met bloemen 1745 - 1775

Curator: Stepping closer, you can almost smell the beeswax polish of this *Buffetkast met mand met bloemen*, or "Sideboard with basket of flowers," a drawing from around 1745-1775. Editor: Oh, it’s rather… stark, isn't it? A heavy dose of graphite. There’s something almost ghostly about the figures—their stillness is unnerving. The composition has a disquieting austerity. Curator: Yes, starkness becomes it. Look at how the artist, although anonymous, has used charcoal and graphite to create this image in stark black and white. What at first seems simple reveals a whole universe if we but linger a little longer in front of it. A genre scene unfolding from an old drawing technique. I suspect this artist worked a great deal. Editor: The basket of flowers, ostensibly the focal point, fades into the background—it's swallowed up by that heavy darkness of the wall! What do you think this arrangement indicates about the piece as a whole, other than that perhaps the image focuses elsewhere than what its title indicates? Curator: I sense, though, the table, which offers itself to us with that wild mess of lines, offers a feast we don't see for figures lost in shadow. Is it grief that separates these souls in such proximity? Look, for instance, at how each dish is almost scribbled into existence. Not there, nor gone, as such. Just evoked for a fleeting, haunting moment. Editor: True, and there's this visual weight in the upper half, pulling the composition downward. But that intense hatching of shadow across the backdrop works, strangely enough, as a structural counterpoint. Do you observe that, together with its balance and proportion? The artist teases us into wanting more but offers no clear view on who the protagonists actually are or what they are about to experience. The drama is understated! Curator: Absolutely! A whisper, really. Here at the Rijksmuseum, the quiet company of these figures invites reflection—what hangs unsaid, what feasts remain untouched, and who watches us from the darkness, or whom are we awaiting on this very moment? It could be the beginning or end of a drama... the cusp of a feeling made permanent.