Twee vrouwen met een uitgestrekte arm Possibly 1870 - 1878

Curator: We are looking at “Twee vrouwen met een uitgestrekte arm,” or “Two Women with an Extended Arm,” a pencil drawing on paper. Cornelis Springer likely created this study sometime between 1870 and 1878. It now resides here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: I’m immediately drawn to the slight tilt of the figures. It gives this such an ephemeral feeling, like a memory flickering at the edges of your mind. The soft shading emphasizes the vulnerability of the exposed gesture of reaching. What could they be reaching for, I wonder? Curator: Exactly! And given Springer’s other work, this most likely is a preparatory sketch. Think of the extended arm here less as vulnerability and more as possibility. The pose signifies generosity and industriousness. Also note their layered skirts, suggestive of hard-working women, and the slight bending as a sign of everyday work. Editor: But there's such an anonymity to them. No faces to meet. Are they almost allegorical, in a way, representing "womanhood" rather than individual stories? The lack of detail pushes it further away from true portraiture, doesn’t it? Curator: Perhaps. It makes me ponder the collective experience of labor and resilience through its archetypal rendering. I see, maybe even in a utopian way, Springer trying to express an image of collective endeavor in the 19th-century. What you perceive as anonymous is to me more like, "every woman." Editor: Ah, I love that interpretation— "every woman." It flips my melancholic initial reading on its head. I began with this almost ghost-like impermanence, and now, thanks to you, I think there's something universal in it that speaks to connection and outreach. It feels like a symbol— reaching forward, onward. Curator: It also strikes me now as not a random pose, but the anticipation before work: maybe they are checking something on the ground, stretching a hand towards crops, or simply trying to hold to one another to move as one. So many layers to just a study!