Briefkaart aan Philip Zilcken Possibly 1914

This is an old postcard, probably made with printing, and handwritten additions. The sender was Anton L. Koster, and it's addressed to Philip Zilcken, another artist, living in The Hague. I like to think about the social life of an artist, their web of connections. What would it have been like to be Koster, writing this brief note to Zilcken? What was their relationship? Were they friends? Rivals? Did they ever paint together? There's a tenderness here, an acknowledgment of another artist's path. It's just a simple postcard, but it’s like a little portal into the past, a moment of connection between two artists, and with us now, all these years later. Art is never created in a vacuum, it's always part of a conversation. This postcard is like a small brushstroke in the ongoing, ever-evolving painting that is the history of art.