Ontwerp voor tininleg voor een paneel 1874 - 1945

Carel Adolph Lion Cachet made this design for tin inlay for a panel, and it lives at the Rijksmuseum. You know, it's funny, with a drawing like this, you're seeing the bones of the thing. The dark ink, so decisive, shapes leaves and roses, a study in contrasts against the pale paper. The graphite under-drawing gives it a sketchy kind of feel. It’s as though the artist is thinking aloud, working out the kinks, right there on the page. The design is contained within a bracketed shape which mimics the eventual tin panel. Look at that little bud at the left, just barely there, a few quick strokes and boom, it’s a rose. It reminds me of Matisse's paper cut-outs – that same economy of line, that same sense of play. Both artists are really interested in the tension between abstraction and representation, pushing the boundaries of what a flower, or anything, can be. It's art as conversation, a back-and-forth across time and space.