Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1904

Pieter Lodewijk Tak wrote this letter to Jan Veth in Amsterdam around 1898, and it's rendered in a brown ink, full of loops and lines, on a pale page. The act of writing itself, the flow of the pen across the paper, feels like a dance, a private conversation captured in physical form. Looking closely, the textures come alive. The ink sits slightly raised on the paper, catching the light. The pressure varies, creating thick and thin lines, dark and light passages. Where the ink pools, you can almost feel the weight of the words, the emotions behind them. See how the ascenders and descenders of the letters reach out, almost touching each other, like figures in a crowd? Each stroke is alive, a little gesture full of energy. This attention to the mark reminds me of Cy Twombly’s scribbled paintings, where the act of writing becomes a form of abstract expression. Like Twombly, Tak uses the written word not just to convey information, but to create a space for feeling, for intuition, for the sheer pleasure of making marks.