Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1903 - 1917

This letter to Jan Veth was made in 1903 by Willem Bastiaan Tholen, likely using ink on paper. The mark-making here feels so immediate, so personal, it’s like we’re catching a glimpse into the artist’s stream of consciousness. Artmaking, at its core, is a process, a journey of thought and feeling made visible. Look at the way the ink bleeds into the paper, creating these soft, blurred edges around each stroke. It’s not about perfection; it’s about capturing a moment, an idea, in its rawest form. The surface has this incredible texture, almost like you can feel the fibers of the paper beneath the ink. I’m drawn to the word ‘Wende’ at the top of the letter – how the downstrokes of the ‘W’ and ‘d’ are so bold and confident, yet the ‘e’ tapers off into this delicate, almost hesitant line. It's kind of like the whole essence of artmaking, that interplay between certainty and uncertainty. This reminds me a little of Cy Twombly's scribbled canvases. They both tap into this sense of immediacy, of art as a direct expression of thought and feeling, prioritizing the process of creation over any fixed meaning.