Ontwerp voor raam in het Noordertransept in de Dom te Utrecht c. 1934

Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst designed this stained-glass window with chalk, charcoal, and pastel on paper. You can see the hand of God reaching in from the top right corner, surrounded by blues, reds, browns, and golds, the colors all contained by the black lines that delineate the panes. Looking at this, I imagine Holst-like, in his studio, trying to figure out how to represent divinity in a modern way. It’s a sketch, a plan, a proposal—but it’s also a work of art in its own right. The texture of the paper, the graininess of the chalk, the smudges and erasures—they all tell a story of process, of searching. The lines have a beautiful graphic quality, really holding the planes of color in place. But then the smudgy pastels soften the whole thing and give it an ethereal feel, like light streaming through an actual stained-glass window. Holst, like so many artists, was in dialogue with the past, but trying to make something new.