Brief aan Ina van Eibergen Santhagens-Waller c. 1878 - 1938

Curator: We're looking at a piece from the Rijksmuseum titled "Brief aan Ina van Eibergen Santhagens-Waller." It's an ink drawing on paper by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst, dating from around 1878 to 1938. It looks like an intimate handwritten letter. Editor: My first impression? The looping script gives a sense of urgency and yet, intimacy. There’s a hurried quality, perhaps, but with a clear sense of personal connection. Curator: Indeed. As an iconographer, I find the choice of script particularly compelling. Calligraphy has always carried a certain weight – it symbolizes education, sophistication, and in this case, direct communication. The handwritten form bridges the physical and emotional distance. Editor: From a historical perspective, handwritten letters offer unique insight into a bygone era. In a pre-digital age, this was a primary mode of connection. Examining the letter’s contents – the phrasing, the sentiments – we gain access to the nuances of social and personal relationships of the time. I wish I could read Dutch fluently! Curator: Even without understanding the language, consider how the variations in the thickness of the lines created with the pen might indicate emotional shifts in the writer. A darker stroke could signal emphasis, a lighter one, perhaps reflection. Holst conveys not only a message but also emotion in the very execution. Editor: And thinking about the recipient, Ina van Eibergen Santhagens-Waller. Letters like this offer a snapshot into a personal exchange and prompt us to consider how women navigated artistic and intellectual circles at the time. It is probably just a letter, yet one can dream it had a huge importance to the people invloved, no? Curator: Exactly. A personal item speaks to universal experience. What we’re viewing, essentially, is not simply ink on paper, but a moment suspended in time and history. Editor: Looking at this again after our discussion, the letter makes me want to seek out all forms of personal writing—letters, notes—that convey history’s unwritten emotions and insights. Curator: Yes, it really emphasizes the importance of slowing down to appreciate the nuances of direct human connection, in any form of written medium.