Tuin van het huis Kersbergen, Zeist 1914

Lambertus Hendrik van Berk made this small painting called Tuin van het huis Kersbergen, Zeist, with oil on board at an unknown date. The garden path is luscious! The painting's a tiny window into a world of green. You can see Van Berk setting up his easel, squinting, mixing up greens and reds and yellows, trying to wrestle the garden into the space of this little rectangle. There’s something so ambitious about trying to capture a whole world in something so small. He's not trying to replicate a photograph, but rather to capture the feeling of being in a particular place. Painting's an act of empathy – the artist is responding to and building on the work of all the painters who came before him. It’s a whole conversation across time, inspiring each other's creativity.