Schetsboek met 47 bladen c. 1874 - 1875

This is a sketchbook with 47 pages, created by Willem Cornelis Rip, who lived from 1856 to 1922. Sketchbooks, often filled with preliminary drawings, function as intimate windows into the artistic process. Rip, born in Rotterdam, lived through a period of immense social and political change that dramatically shaped Dutch identity. As a student at the Rotterdam Academy, Rip would have been part of a burgeoning art world, one increasingly influenced by the push and pull between traditional artistic values and the avant-garde movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These sketchbooks, in their private and portable format, are a place to work through these tensions, a place to develop alternative narratives. Think of this object as a silent witness to the artist's evolution, capturing a moment of experimentation. It represents the journey from initial concept to finished work, and invites us to reflect on the messy, iterative nature of creativity itself.