Boom 1865 - 1913

Curator: "Boom," a pencil drawing on paper, captured by Bramine Hubrecht between 1865 and 1913, residing here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: My first impression is how haunting it feels. Almost like looking at a landscape through a smoky veil or maybe the start of something… ominous. Curator: Yes, a somber mood certainly emanates from this sketch. Notice how the landscape, rendered with hurried pencil strokes, isn't precisely detailed? It is about suggestion, not concrete representation. This is really evocative of Impressionism; this rendering seeks to capture a feeling or a transient moment more than photographic accuracy. Editor: And what strikes me about the materiality of this landscape is the high tonal contrast that makes you perceive the visual properties right away. Dark shaded masses that form a strong horizon contrasted by lighter, almost untouched spaces, on the paper. This all contributes to a somewhat raw sensation to the eye, where texture and form blend on paper. The formal composition feels incomplete as it seems the work stops short in the right corner, as if to create more ambiguity, maybe to imply an unending continuation, as a means of aesthetic language? Curator: Hubrecht masterfully allows for visual completion to happen in the viewer’s eye. The use of light and shadow, despite the seemingly quick application, offers a rather compelling and profound observation about the impermanence of landscape. And that incomplete section perhaps does hint at continuation, but it can also mean the transience that impressionism tried to immortalize, wouldn't you say? Editor: Perhaps both? A continuous, ephemeral moment... I love that paradox. But really looking closely, it seems that more detail would give the picture much more in terms of space definition but instead she made a choice towards vagueness that is what strikes my sensibility in the first place, since you cannot have a proper focus. Curator: Well, the choice allows our own memories of the landscape to infiltrate. To dream. Editor: Precisely.