Studieblad 1839

Curator: Well, at first glance, it's rather understated, almost ghostly. I see layers upon layers of delicate washes, hints of forms struggling to emerge from the paper itself. A sense of profound subtlety, really. Editor: This piece is titled "Studieblad", and it's a drawing in watercolor on paper by Johannes Tavenraat, created in 1839, and currently residing here at the Rijksmuseum. Tavenraat was working within the Romantic movement. Curator: Romanticism, absolutely! You can feel the longing for the sublime even in these faded tones. Look closely at the faint, skeletal structures barely suggested, possibly architecture… Editor: Interesting that you say "suggested." Given it’s called "Studieblad", or Study Sheet, maybe these barely visible marks are explorations, ideas barely formed before being abandoned. The ephemerality of the medium seems crucial to its nature, doesn't it? Watercolors on paper... such fragile materials to record artistic investigation. Curator: Yes, there's definitely a transitory quality, but even in incompleteness, there's the pursuit of the monumental. Perhaps Tavenraat intended to capture not a specific place, but the very feeling of historical grandeur, the weight of ages distilled into a few washes. That scribbled area over there even makes me wonder if that might have been some symbol representing transformation. Editor: It's tempting to assign meaning like that. But what does the paper itself, the weave and quality of it, tell us about Tavenraat’s practice? Paper in this period became a crucial ingredient of many images that now hang in our finest museums. I see so much preparatory material. We need to remember this piece sits in the Romantic movement which was concerned with the everyday processes of labour. Curator: The raw, honest process of making! I understand. The Romantic spirit always has that tension: between raw emotion and highly mediated cultural forms. Editor: Well, for me, focusing on materiality contextualizes what would appear incomplete through the artistic investigation. Curator: Precisely. The dialogue between absence and presence... the visible and the invisible. So crucial to understanding this Romantic watercolor drawing. Editor: Indeed. Next time you encounter an unfinished drawing, remember there may have been far more exploration present at the time.