Man met breedgerande hoed en een stok in de hand, van achteren 1652

Curator: Harmen ter Borch, the Dutch Golden Age artist, created this drawing "Man met breedgerande hoed en een stok in de hand, van achteren"—Man with a broad-brimmed hat and a stick in his hand, from behind—in 1652, using ink on paper. Editor: I’m struck by its simplicity. A few strokes, and there's a whole character, lost in his own world. I imagine him wandering through the Dutch countryside. Curator: It’s captivating, isn't it? Ter Borch's drawings often capture these fleeting moments of everyday life, but what interests me is the sheer efficiency of his method. Notice the lines; there is the texture of the figure and his garment, how a few flicks of the wrist become shadow and weight, so what you see is not so much just ink, but the pressure of mind given expression on the material. Editor: Absolutely. You can almost feel the scratch of the quill on the paper. And that stark contrast—it really makes the figure pop. Makes me wonder, though, was paper like this as ubiquitous as it is now? Was ink similarly affordable to the everyday artisan and craftsman? Curator: Interesting. Ter Borch was from a wealthy family. In this moment it almost speaks more to the freedom to just draw—sketch on expensive materials for pleasure alone, when much of the material culture, and labor and toil of others had been mobilized. I do not know if Ter Borch’s drawing were sold, or just for himself, yet that very question speaks of materiality! Editor: Precisely! And how the material conditions—availability of quality paper, of the specific ink and skill—shaped Ter Borch's final work. There’s a direct line from raw material to refined art. A social hierarchy embodied in the image’s composition. Curator: Exactly! He captures a story, a place, even a character's internal life, using minimal materials and line economy. I like the immediacy here – the quality of ink, the quality of paper – so fragile, yet here this tiny scene lives on. It has aged like very old leather – tough. Editor: It's that tension, isn’t it? The grandness of the social circumstances surrounding artwork’s making and distribution that has contributed to it enduring. It's all there, interwoven into the paper itself. I now wonder about the paper and ink as material.