Studieblad met vijf paren 1820 - 1872

Curator: Allow me to introduce a work by Hendrik Abraham Klinkhamer. Created sometime between 1820 and 1872, this piece titled "Studieblad met vijf paren" or "Study Sheet with Five Couples" comes to us from the collection of the Rijksmuseum. It's executed in ink, pencil, and charcoal on paper. What strikes you about it initially? Editor: A charming sort of unease, I think. It's like a forgotten page from a novel, hinting at tales untold. They look rather serious. A touch dour, maybe? And yet the fluidity of the lines makes it feel whimsical at the same time, like the artist was having a bit of fun. Curator: The choice of costume definitely points to a certain deliberate symbolic staging. This image pulses with visual echoes and borrowings, doesn't it? Those historical outfits conjure particular associations of social identity and values of certain time periods, with the clothes almost defining each figure, a kind of shorthand of understanding through garments. Editor: Absolutely. It’s like each grouping encapsulates an entire story. I'm especially drawn to the couple on the lower left with the spear, almost reminiscent of early gothic romance. What is the psychological play between those two individuals? Curator: What fascinates me is the continuity and transmission of visual motifs throughout time. Klinkhamer’s work demonstrates an intense awareness of figures in historical dress and genre painting, referencing an idea or moment and re-situating those motifs within a nineteenth century context. Each figure, despite existing as a sketch on a shared sheet, stands in a cultural stream that informs the meaning of the image. Editor: It makes you think, doesn’t it? About how we're constantly dressing up in the ideas of the past, these half-remembered fashions of thought. Perhaps that is what gives the figures that slightly forlorn, displaced air. Curator: An echo reverberating through generations, finding itself on paper again. Editor: Precisely, which transforms the whole image from a collection of portraits to a thought provoking representation about selfhood. Thanks to this drawing, I find I understand the burden of visual symbology that we are each forced to carry a little bit more.