Gezicht op gebouwen aan het water c. 1828 - 1897

Curator: So, here we have "Gezicht op gebouwen aan het water" – that translates to "View of Buildings on the Water"— a pencil drawing on paper by Adrianus Eversen. It was made sometime between 1828 and 1897, so a pretty big window there. What's your initial take? Editor: Sparse, evocative, unfinished…it’s a feeling more than a depiction, wouldn't you say? A memory struggling to come into focus. Curator: I agree. The skeletal buildings rising on the left feel like echoes of old power structures, rendered fragile and temporal by Eversen's hand. Editor: Temporal indeed. Given the period in which this was created, I immediately think about the rise of industrialization, its impact on urban landscapes, and how art served—and still serves—as documentation of shifting social and economic paradigms. It's interesting to consider how this might relate to movements like impressionism that explored similar themes. Curator: The hazy rendering of a ship hints at travel, perhaps commerce, which ties into that theme nicely. There’s this liminal space between reality and the impression of it. It makes you wonder what Eversen chose to leave out, doesn't it? What narratives or social realities are veiled within its ghostly strokes? Editor: Exactly! What silences echo through the deliberate elisions of detail? Does it unintentionally—or perhaps intentionally—mirror the societal exclusions of his time? Class disparities? The erasure of marginalized communities? I think about that when considering how it omits or highlights specific architectural elements. Curator: Perhaps the incomplete nature is a commentary itself! I do admire the delicate balance Eversen achieved. It dances on that border between representation and pure abstraction, so what is more radical then to show, in its pure state, the creative process, in a manner that evokes contemplation and perhaps invites us to do our own explorations, our own filling of the gaps? Editor: Which is, I think, part of what makes this unassuming sketch surprisingly resonant, a whisper of a bygone era, posing potent questions to us today. It also inspires questions on what's worth immortalizing, who writes the scripts? Curator: Yes, a conversation starter. A quiet but insistent one. Editor: I like that, quiet, but insistent. Let's leave it there.