Paard met een kar en een duinlandschap 1870 - 1931

Willem Bastiaan Tholen rendered this drawing of a horse with a cart and dune landscape with crayons. The horse, a universal symbol of power and freedom, here toils, pulling a cart laden with unseen burdens across a sandy landscape. Consider how the image of a horse, once prancing freely across ancient Greek friezes, gradually transforms. In medieval tapestries, it becomes a warhorse, burdened with armored knights; in the Renaissance, a symbol of nobility and wealth; and now, in Tholen's sketch, it returns to the realm of the working class, an ordinary beast of burden laboring. This shift reveals a poignant commentary on progress and societal change. The enduring, almost primal, connection to the animal evokes a bittersweet sense of nostalgia for a simpler, perhaps idealized, past. The horse’s tireless movement taps into our collective memory, reminding us of nature's relentless cycles and the enduring spirit of life that persists through time.