Portret van Jules Verne 1895 - 1940

This is a portrait of Jules Verne, made by an anonymous artist and housed in the Rijksmuseum. It's an old photo, the kind that shifts from light to dark like it’s breathing. I’m thinking about the process of making this portrait. What was the artist trying to capture? The essence of a man who could imagine worlds beyond our own? Probably. The texture isn’t paint here, but in the way the light catches the beard and the glint in his eye… you could imagine it as brushstrokes. Light and shadow is the artist's medium. This photo whispers of the past, when artists and writers were in constant dialogue, bouncing ideas off each other, inspiring each other's creativity. It shows how every artist engages in an ongoing conversation across time, inspiring uncertainty, ambiguity and multiple interpretations.