Landschap, mogelijk een duinlandschap 1881 - 1927

Editor: This landscape, possibly a dune landscape, is a pencil drawing by Johan Antonie de Jonge, likely created sometime between 1881 and 1927. I’m really drawn to the sketch-like quality – it feels immediate, like a fleeting impression captured on paper. What do you see in this piece? Curator: What strikes me is how De Jonge uses the humble pencil to evoke such a grand landscape. The dune, that archetypal border space, is laden with symbolism. Throughout art history, it appears as both a protective barrier and a threshold—a place of transition. Editor: Transition from what to what, exactly? Curator: Precisely! From the cultivated to the wild, from the known to the unknown. Notice how the soft gradations of the pencil suggest a feeling of mutability, of a landscape constantly reshaped by the elements. Think about the cultural memory of the Dutch landscape itself. Dunes are vital for protection, but they also remind us of the constant struggle against the sea. Does that inform your reading of the image at all? Editor: That gives me a lot to consider. I see the fragility, yes, but also the persistence, in those sweeping pencil strokes, of something resisting erasure. The pencil lines do lend it an air of impermanence, but that gives way to resilience with this new historical context. Curator: It's that tension, isn’t it, between vulnerability and strength. De Jonge's choice of medium almost echoes the landscape itself: yielding yet firm, ephemeral yet enduring. What do you make of the relatively empty foreground, those almost hesitant pencil marks? Editor: Initially, I saw it as unfinished, or less defined. But perhaps they serve to invite the viewer into that liminal space. A path or possibility… Curator: Precisely! The symbolism of the path and landscape gives me so much more to explore than before.