Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1909

This is 'Brief aan Jan Veth', or 'Letter to Jan Veth', made in 1909 by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst. It's an envelope, a site of intimate communication rendered strange by being stuck in a museum. I can imagine Holst, pen in hand, carefully writing the address, the ink bleeding slightly into the paper. Maybe he paused, thinking about what to say, hoping his words would resonate with Jan Veth. There's something melancholic about seeing this personal object frozen in time. It makes me think about correspondence and the lost art of letter writing, with its own special textures of paper and ink. Each stroke has a story to tell. The stamps, those tiny portraits, feel like miniature paintings themselves. Holst was a graphic designer. Perhaps he saw the whole envelope as a canvas, balancing text and image. And what about us, looking at this letter a century later? We are all in conversation, with each other and with the dead. Art helps us to communicate across the void.