Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1900 - 1924

This is Gustave Bourcard's letter to Philip Zilcken, written in 1900. It’s all gestural marks, like a dance across the paper. The words are penned in a dark lavender ink. You can see the pressure he applied. It’s almost like he's sketching out a thought, each word a stroke of the brush. I imagine him hunched over a desk, the ink still wet, the nib scratching against the page. I wonder what he was thinking as he wrote it? Was he in a hurry, or did he take his time, savoring each word? The texture of the paper, the smell of the ink, the weight of the pen—all these little things add up to something bigger. It’s like the work of Cy Twombly, where the act of writing becomes a form of art. There’s something deeply human about handwriting. We’re all just trying to make sense of the world, one gesture at a time. And in the process, we leave a little piece of ourselves behind.