Boom 1843 - 1844

Curator: Just a few steps further, and to your left, we encounter a drawing titled "Boom," created by Johannes Tavenraat around 1843-1844. The artwork, a study rendered in pencil on paper, resides here in the Rijksmuseum. Editor: The very first impression is of fragility, wouldn’t you say? The slender trunk bending ever so slightly, and the soft pencil strokes almost blending into the blank paper—it’s evocative of vulnerability and resilience all at once. Curator: Indeed. And there’s something decidedly Romantic about that vulnerability, as you suggest. During this period, the solitary tree became a common motif. In many ways the trees represented a sublime sense of feeling dwarfed by nature's greatness, but it can also imply a social symbolism related to the strength or fragility of human structures. Editor: Right. We know that Tavenraat predominantly engaged in depicting landscapes. What then makes this tree "social" in nature and what might we assume of trees portrayed in landscapes during this particular historical and cultural moment? Curator: Well, that gets interesting. Consider this image's appeal: for city dwellers who could access images of landscapes via an artwork like this one, the sense of longing for the purity of nature was an act of defiance to what industrial society could never give them, and that longing or act of resistance became its own political symbol of the desire to be "free". Editor: I understand how social status could be communicated using landscapes; after all, landscapes helped promote land ownership. Curator: Exactly! We can also see this symbolic visual trope in contemporary art today in the service of social awareness. In fact, artists continue to show audiences ecological disruption with single images of landscapes or nature in distress. This is no less politically motivated, I assure you. Editor: A perfect synthesis of romantic idealism, the individual's emotional world, and their socio-political conditions, wouldn’t you agree? Looking closer at this sketch again, there's a beautiful balance in that curvature and reaching branch, all delicately rendered. It truly captures something essential, some sense of tenacious life amidst the elements. Curator: Well said. A brief and telling reminder that these solitary trees encapsulate both the temporal, ever-present landscape, but they're just as emblematic of those human contexts, the social lives in constant flux within and around the "Boom."