Schetsboek met 26 bladen 1849 - 1895

Here is a sketchbook with 26 pages, made by Willem Koekkoek, dating back to the 19th century. The sketchbook itself—its darkened, worn cover— speaks volumes as a symbolic object. It is a vessel of potential, an invitation to creation. In antiquity, blank tablets represented the tabula rasa, the unformed mind ready to receive knowledge, much like this sketchbook awaits the artist's touch. Consider the very act of concealing within a cover, a recurring motif in art. Think of veiled figures in Renaissance paintings, or closed doors in Dutch interiors, each suggesting a hidden world, a secret waiting to be revealed. This sketchbook, too, keeps its secrets, guarding the artist's private visions. This simple, closed book also echoes ideas of human memory, a storehouse of experience. In psychoanalytic terms, it embodies the subconscious, a repository of images and emotions that influence our actions. Its blank pages offer the promise of rebirth, of an artistic re-emergence, the non-linear progression of ideas surfacing in the artist's mind.