Brief aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1900 - 1916

This is a letter written in 1910 by Henrietta Buhot, from Paris. Look at the slant of the handwriting, how it dances across the page with a kind of urgent grace. I imagine her sitting at a small desk, pen in hand, the nib scratching against the paper, each word forming with deliberate speed. You can almost feel the weight of her thoughts as she chooses each word. What might she have been thinking about, what was her mood that day? Maybe she paused, pen hovering, searching for the perfect phrase to convey her meaning. The beauty of the cursive script reminds us that writing, like painting, is an act of mark-making, a direct expression of thought and emotion. It is gestural, like a painting. Buhot’s letter echoes the long tradition of artists communicating through correspondence. It's a reminder that artists are constantly in conversation with one another, across time and space, sharing ideas, offering support, and sparking new possibilities.