Landschap met rivier de Berkel 1855 - 1881

Curator: Right, let's talk about "Landschap met rivier de Berkel", or "Landscape with the River Berkel", created sometime between 1855 and 1881 by Coen Metzelaar. What strikes you first? Editor: It's the quietness, definitely the muted greyscale quality and the sense of being in a hushed, contemplative space. Like stepping back in time. All those pencil strokes… it feels deeply personal, like catching someone's quiet moment. Curator: Absolutely. Considering it's pencil on paper, the effect is surprisingly textured, wouldn't you agree? Notice the visible strokes and smudges around the treeline and reflected in the river—you can almost feel the give of the paper beneath the artist's hand. This immediate visual evidence highlights both the artist's skillful labor and the physical materiality of the medium. Editor: And there’s a real simplicity in it, too. Just the basics—trees, water, sky. It makes me think about how Metzelaar viewed the landscape as material itself, readily transformed from just a space into artistic material. It is about observation as physical work. Curator: Precisely. Perhaps the realism movement that emerged at the time had pushed the artist toward recording unembellished scenes like this, capturing the very real work in cultivating land... the ordinary and every day. No heroic or exaggerated perspectives here. It all serves the quiet mood, really. Editor: Right. A meditative snapshot of place, made with the simplest of means. It wasn’t just recording the scene; Metzelaar had to engage physically with this material – he applied, erased, layered—to make a new statement of it. Even now we respond to the hand-made nature of the image, our eye mimics Metzelaar's process as it sweeps across the scene. Curator: So true! I keep being drawn back to that stretch of water, which mirrors the trees perfectly and gives it this sense of…boundlessness? It suggests that the outside is also in some sense always inside us. Editor: Indeed. It's an object deeply entangled with material reality, artistic intention, and the very essence of a lived landscape. It reminds us that even the simplest materials, when coaxed in the right way, have power. Curator: It feels appropriate, then, to let this view sit with us a moment longer, letting its materials and history resonate on its own. Editor: Definitely, there is some peaceful joy in contemplating landscapes shaped so plainly by our own hand.