Brief aan Jan Veth Possibly 1925

Here's a letter to Jan Veth, probably dashed off with a fountain pen by Isaac Israels in 1925. It's a real glimpse into a conversation, a life, a moment. Look at the way the ink pools and thins, how the letters lean and loop. Israels isn’t trying to be perfect or precious. He's just getting his thoughts down, and that directness is what makes it so appealing. I love how the words crowd each other, some darker, some lighter, like a conversation happening right before your eyes. You can almost hear the scratch of the nib on the page. As a painter, I find something deeply satisfying in the immediacy of it all. It’s like a sketch, a quick study, capturing the essence of a feeling or an idea before it slips away. Maybe that’s the most important lesson painters teach each other across time - to value the spontaneous gesture, the unedited thought, the messy reality of being human.