Zeilschepen voor de kust van Scheveningen 1888 - 1889

Curator: Immediately, I'm struck by the energy of this sketch. It’s so light, so free. It makes me want to grab my own sketchbook and just, you know, let loose. Editor: We are looking at a pen and ink drawing entitled "Zeilschepen voor de kust van Scheveningen" by Alexander Shilling, made sometime between 1888 and 1889. It seems to have been ripped from a sketchbook. We can actually see the binding on the left. Scheveningen, by the way, is a coastal district of The Hague, in the Netherlands. Curator: Right, Scheveningen! I always mispronounce that. There’s something inherently romantic about old coastal towns. But looking at this, I wonder what exactly Shilling wanted to capture. Was it simply the boats, or the spirit of the people using the sea that day? Editor: In nineteenth-century Dutch society, maritime paintings frequently signified national pride and mercantile power. Scheveningen itself was undergoing rapid change at this time, transforming from a fishing village to a tourist resort. So this image is located within a contested space between tradition, the working class and modernity, where depictions of boats are very far from neutral. Curator: I can see that, though for me personally, this drawing doesn't evoke anything of that historical or cultural framing. I actually see loneliness here – these skeletal boats with the ghostly outlines of figures huddling on the shoreline… Editor: And that feeling is, of course, legitimate. Given the increased displacement and alienation many felt through rapid industrialization at that time, it might be a loneliness worth taking seriously! The rough, sketch-like quality and near abstraction, to me, mirrors a broader uncertainty. Curator: It’s a fascinating piece. A window into a specific time and place but also resonating with something deeper and, dare I say, more universal. Editor: Exactly. Shilling gives us an invitation to ponder the relationship between people and the sea, between the personal and the historical, rendered with the simplest of means. Curator: For me, it also makes you wonder, what did Alexander Shilling do next, after drawing it in the sketchbook. That is the other appeal. Editor: It's like catching a fleeting moment, a whispered secret of the sea, forever captured on this fragile page.