Boom bij zonsondergang 1835 - 1845

Curator: Welcome. We’re looking at Johannes Tavenraat’s "Boom bij zonsondergang," or "Tree at Sunset," likely created between 1835 and 1845. It’s currently housed here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: It feels melancholy, doesn’t it? Almost like a stage setting for a particularly somber scene from a Grimm's fairytale. The whole piece is rendered in these sepia tones, very tonal, very muted, casting this somber light over a lone tree, practically skeletal against the fading sky. Curator: Indeed. The landscape tradition, particularly during the Romantic period, often employed natural elements, such as a solitary tree, to evoke specific moods. Tavenraat's choice of watercolour and what seems to be touches of charcoal contribute to the drawing’s ephemeral and almost ghostly quality. It encapsulates a very precise emotional landscape aligned with romanticism and realism. Editor: Exactly! Look at how the lines seem to vibrate. And it's more than just the depiction of a tree; it is the tree’s gesture towards an unknowable setting sun, and the suggestion of passing time... Tavenraat gives us the mood of being there more than an exact view. What I find arresting is the artist's hand, there, in that scene—almost trembling in places with this raw emotion. Curator: His involvement and choices regarding brushwork suggest this intersection between realism's intent to capture things as they were but infused with an expressive emotion inherent in romanticism. I would argue that it is how the artist conveys that emotion through very particular, stylized natural elements. Editor: Right, a specific feeling imbued through a scene. Tavenraat takes something stark and literal, in terms of medium, charcoal drawing for example and pushes into that evocative sphere we now read as Romanticism. What do you take away when you stand here? Curator: For me, it speaks of the relationship between artistic license and representation—it speaks of how society contextualizes nature through art. Editor: And I see someone trying to capture what a particular kind of light feels like. A moment caught on the page before it is gone.