Ontwerp voor drie ramen in het Stadhuis te Amsterdam 1878 - 1938

This is Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst's design for three windows in Amsterdam’s City Hall. It's made with pen and watercolour. I'm imagining Holst in the studio, hunched over the paper, delicately brushing watercolour into these little geometric shapes, one after the other. It’s like a puzzle, or maybe a game of tetris. He’s pushing these colours around, responding to what each shape needs, slowly building up these images of figures and objects. And I wonder, did he ever think about the way light would filter through those colours, transforming the space they inhabited? It makes me think about the way stained glass can activate a whole room, bathing it in coloured light. Holst is a craftsman, but also an artist, manipulating light and colour to create atmosphere. It’s not just decoration, it’s alchemy!