Brief aan Pieter Haverkorn van Rijsewijk Possibly 1910

This letter to Pieter Haverkorn van Rijsewijk was written in 1916 by Richard W. Goulding, probably with ink on paper. Just imagine him in his study, the nib scratching across the page, forming those elegant, careful loops and lines. I can feel his thought process as he crafts each sentence. Did he pause, pen in hand, searching for the right word? See how the writing trails off? I'm sympathetic to that feeling! He probably had so many things on his mind, but had to come back and follow the line of thought. It’s like a dance between the hand, the ink, and the paper, a physical expression of thought. I wonder how many drafts he might have made of this letter. It’s a bit like painting, adding layer upon layer, each stroke building upon the last until the image—or in this case, the letter—finally emerges. I can imagine him sitting in his studio thinking about how to best acknowledge the photograph. It makes you think about all the conversations, the back-and-forths, that happen between artists and thinkers across time. Each letter, each painting, is a response to something that came before, a continuation of a dialogue that stretches back centuries.