Abklatsch van de krijttekening op pagina 58 Possibly 1906 - 1909

Curator: Well, hello there. Have you ever felt the ghost of a landscape? Editor: Intrigued! My first impression is of fading memories... a subtle watercolor almost dissolving into the paper. It evokes a sense of ephemerality, a whisper of something seen and almost lost. Curator: Precisely! This piece is an 'Abklatsch van de krijttekening op pagina 58' – roughly, a "reprint of a chalk drawing on page 58." Created by Willem Witsen between, we think, 1906 and 1909. Think of it: he transferred a chalk drawing onto paper. Layers upon layers of experience… Editor: That technique is fascinating. The ghostly quality now makes sense. I see in it echoes of early photographic processes... the deliberate and the accidental histories layering themselves onto a single image. Was Witsen engaging with the industrialization of image-making in some way? Curator: Perhaps… or perhaps he just liked happy accidents. I am taken by his delicate approach, the way he teases form from the void. He's less concerned with representation, I believe, than with atmosphere and feeling. Doesn't it make you feel melancholy, in a way? Editor: Absolutely, but it's a productive melancholy, I think. These landscapes, even in their fragile state, were so important to impressionists, to document scenes of bourgeois society and spaces to recharge the urban self... and that says a lot about society’s evolving relationship with nature and labor at the time. Curator: I agree! It almost prompts me to make my own… although maybe without so much "method." I think Witsen invites us to explore the beauty in decay, in impermanence. Like memories themselves, these watercolor impressions haunt rather than define. Editor: Indeed. The layering that occurred – of landscape, drawing, chalk, and watercolor -- offers a reflection on our layered experiences of space, environment, and memory. It certainly complicates how we perceive both art and history. Curator: So very well said. Shall we keep moving or sit and watch the paint dry? Editor: I think it’s time for the next painting.