Plaat met namen van voormalige predikanten uit Batenburg before 1908

This is a spread from a book of some kind, made by Benjamin Charlé, sometime between his birth in 1845 and his death in 1925. On the left, a handwritten page; on the right, a printed page listing names. I imagine him hunched over these pages, the lamp casting a small circle of light around his desk. What's so interesting about this object is the contrast between the handwritten and the printed. The handwritten page is full of unique characters, loops, and idiosyncratic letterforms. You can imagine his hand moving across the page, each stroke a record of his thoughts. The opposite page is more static and uniform. The typeface gives the impression of authority and permanence. Both pages are about record-keeping and memory. But one feels deeply personal, while the other is more impersonal and official. It reminds me that the exchange between those two modes of thinking about painting—the personal and the impersonal—is part of a much longer conversation, with each artistic generation responding to the questions posed by those who came before.