Gezicht op een straat c. 1828 - 1897

Curator: This drawing, "Gezicht op een straat"—or "View of a Street"—is by Adrianus Eversen, dating roughly from 1828 to 1897. It’s a pencil sketch on paper. Editor: There's a fragility to it, isn't there? A sketch hardly there... It almost looks like the street might disappear if you breathed too hard on it! Curator: Exactly! Eversen captured cityscapes with such dedication, using everyday materials like paper and pencil—quite a contrast to the opulent oil paintings that were dominating the art world back then. We often forget the immense labor of drawing, preparing pencils, sourcing paper. Editor: And what do you think he’s getting at here, in choosing realism as his method of delivery? Curator: I imagine he's wanting to get away from all of the showiness. It seems to cut to the point and try to grasp the basic feel and life in the streets as plainly and truthfully as possible. Editor: But it’s a ghostly kind of realism. Not a single human figure, and very, very light use of lead—it all makes it dreamlike rather than descriptive. It's about something other than simply depicting what was there, wouldn’t you agree? I get the sensation of time shifting, or maybe buildings layered upon other buildings that once stood there. Curator: You might be right; perhaps there's something else going on that I didn't originally account for. Even so, I do find value in realism for what it has the possibility to do—show us our past conditions of consumption and construction by meticulously accounting for material and structure. Editor: A materialist approach makes sense. The very rawness of the drawing underscores that materiality you point out, though there’s a beauty, a quiet poetry, in its tentative lines. Eversen’s world, as fleeting as it is fixed in place. Curator: True, this offers an evocative approach to historical analysis of both material life and urban construction. The history in pencil… Editor: Well put! An unassuming history but still… a history.