Roeiboot met op de achtergrond schepen voor anker 1870 - 1931

Curator: We are looking at "Rowboat with Ships Anchored in the Background," a pencil and etching drawing made by Willem Bastiaan Tholen, likely between 1870 and 1931. It resides here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: The immediate feeling is quietude. A single rower, boats at rest... the muted tones create such a sense of calm. The artist’s economy of line is really striking, particularly in how the forms of the boats and clouds emerge with such soft gradations. Curator: Absolutely. Tholen has skillfully balanced mass and void. The subtle hatching technique provides volume and depth with the texture and directional strokes creating both form and aerial perspective. I'm particularly interested in the artist's choices for depicting water in what might be etching medium - the horizontal stroke. The consistency of the lines leads me to assume it might be pencil. Editor: Yes, the almost-smoky quality is wonderful, isn't it? For me, boats are loaded with cultural baggage. Vessels of both escape and return, journeys across thresholds of the unknown and into a new land, whether a hopeful future or the final destination. Here, anchored, they represent a certain kind of suspended animation. What could that mean symbolically? Curator: From a purely compositional viewpoint, the arrangement and balance between the anchoring ships on the horizon to the presence of the solitary rowboat is very compelling. The tonality also speaks of liminal space as we move from foreground to background. The pencil, the gray palette – all reduce this etching to its bare essence. There’s something so fundamental in its construction, its syntax. Editor: So even without narrative clarity, it hints at a larger story of being in-between... That open horizon pulls us outward into a timeless space where sky and water are fused by this overall gray tone that suggests uncertainty. It feels very resonant even now. Curator: A convergence of formal properties lends emotional and even allegorical strength to such an ostensibly "simple" landscape study, agreed? The artist achieves something much bigger, in essence, through the refinement of tone, texture and the directional line. Editor: Perhaps a reminder that rest is indeed essential between journeys. It’s been enlightening looking at Tholen’s work today! Curator: Indeed. I am seeing aspects of structure and perspective which are intriguing when applied to the wider considerations and analysis.