Huis tussen de berkenbomen 1870 - 1931

Curator: Welcome. We’re looking at Willem Bastiaan Tholen's "Huis tussen de berkenbomen" – that's "House Among the Birch Trees" – which he created sometime between 1870 and 1931. The medium is pencil and ink on paper. Editor: Immediately, there's this understated melancholy, a feeling of solitude. The texture relies on delicate pencil strokes to evoke light filtering through a forest. What is this image suggesting through such muted, seemingly limited means? Curator: The formal simplicity serves to highlight the artist’s skillful use of light and shadow. Note how Tholen uses dense clusters of pencil strokes to delineate the trees. There’s a rhythmic quality in the mark-making that almost seems to emulate the swaying of branches in the breeze. Editor: The drawing’s subject and medium situate it within the Realist movement, with impressionistic undertones—I agree. It is attempting to show the world around the artist as realistically as possible, though that seems to idealize it through its focus on serene simplicity, a world from which, for instance, industrialization might seem very distant. Was this serenity a fiction constructed for, or against, particular socio-economic realities? Curator: That interpretation certainly touches on one of the many ways we might view art from that period. We could also, of course, simply discuss Tholen's interest in landscape and his capacity for understanding light and capturing atmospheric effects. Notice that he used shading and line weight not to imitate life, but to offer his impression of the life of light within that scenery. Editor: It almost feels as if Tholen is offering an alternative. Instead of depicting human triumph or industry, the subject matter shifts, even gently resists those forms. Curator: Well, whatever statement, if any, the work attempts, Tholen has produced something structurally complex using limited elements—ink, paper, pencil, landscape. Editor: That's well said; it resonates both within its historical moment and across our contemporary desire for authenticity. I find myself thinking more about that intersection between his formal capabilities and this broader social field—all while standing here and experiencing something incredibly private.