Vlinder en schip Possibly 1779

Curator: Look at this intriguing page from a sketchbook, titled "Vlinder en schip," or "Butterfly and Ship," possibly dating back to 1779, credited to Jan Brandes. It's a mixed-media drawing using pencil and coloured pencil. Editor: It has the dreamy, unfinished quality of something remembered or imagined. The delicate butterflies hovering above this sketched ship… There’s a real sense of wistful longing. Curator: It’s precisely that incompleteness that pulls me in. You have these quite meticulously rendered butterflies at the top, labeled with taxonomic information, hovering almost protectively over this very loosely sketched vessel. To me it is evocative of a scholar, a Romantic traveller. Editor: Absolutely. Butterflies as symbols… often represent transformation, the soul, but here, above a ship... Could they be dreams of travel, of the unknown, weighed against the solidity of that ship, a tool of exploration but also conquest? Curator: It’s like Brandes is asking himself if he wants to chase knowledge systematically, or if he's going to launch himself, quite literally, into an open and possibly uncontrollable space. Note how detailed those tiny inscriptions above the moths are compared with the vessel. It also makes you consider his access to scientific thinking in the age, alongside art. Editor: That's the magic, isn’t it? This delicate balance between the empirical and the fantastical. I imagine Brandes sketching feverishly on deck, catching moths in one hand, charcoal in the other. Or, just as likely, recalling both from memory months later! He really is on an interesting journey. Curator: Brandes manages to marry together Romanticism and scientific process so beautifully. You see the ship sailing into some space of hope or freedom. And the butterflies? Perhaps reminders of nature and life, however ephemeral and small. Editor: For me, it’s a perfect image of its era, revealing layers of science, exploration, and introspection, caught between wings and sails.