Briefkaart aan Jan Veth before 1894

Curator: This is Maurits van der Valk’s "Briefkaart aan Jan Veth," created before 1894, currently housed here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: Immediately, I notice the beautiful, delicate script. It feels so personal, intimate somehow, like a whisper across time. Curator: Absolutely. And considering its primary materials—ink and pen on paper—the tactile quality gets me, too. We're looking at a discarded commodity suddenly imbued with artistry and intent. It transforms this seemingly simple message into something far more profound. Editor: What do you think that “something” is, precisely? Beyond its face value as a note. Curator: For me, it hints at the unspoken language of artistic camaraderie. The casualness of its creation points to the intimacy and shared understandings between artists—Van der Valk and Veth. You can almost imagine them chatting over coffee, Van der Valk dashing off this quick message. The gesture, the shared space, rendered enduring by this fleeting pen sketch. Editor: It's compelling to consider the labour involved – both the postal workers moving this piece of paper and the artistic labour evident in that delicate hand. Was this sort of exchange common, a working dialogue? Curator: Most definitely. It's tempting to see this small correspondence as an insight into a lively artistic network, reliant on materials that were, for their time, utterly commonplace. Today? It represents an extraordinary material witness. Editor: Seeing the paper’s aging and knowing that it once held immediacy in an artist’s life provides an irresistible window into another world. Curator: Agreed, to think that it once simply traveled from place to place, as if on winged feet. It certainly feels like a privilege to stop it, and observe its message anew, doesn't it?