Schets van een bouwwerk 1848 - 1888

Curator: This tantalizing little sketch, nonchalantly titled "Schets van een bouwwerk," or "Sketch of a Structure," hails from the sketchbooks of Anton Mauve, created sometime between 1848 and 1888. It's now held at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: Intimate, almost nervously rendered… All graphite and suggestion, I get a provisional, uncertain vibe, like a half-remembered dreamscape, or perhaps the hasty precursor to something much grander. Curator: Indeed. Mauve, though best known for his landscapes teeming with sheep, evidently dabbled in architectural whimsies. Given its medium, the immediate question is less "what *is* it?" than "how was it *made*?" What kind of pencil did he prefer? The grain of the paper becomes crucial; was it finely milled and mass produced? Was this drawing from life or memory? It certainly betrays a nascent interest in form. Editor: I'm just loving the visible erasures! See there, how he wrestled with the receding planes and the tower's brutal simplicity? For me it's more than simply *how* – rather *why*. Was Mauve driven by some yearning for progress or the thrill of the machine, only to wrestle and subdue them back in sketch form through that reductive pencil of his? Curator: Possibly so! Remember, the mid-19th century was a whirlwind of industrial ambition; architecture was changing as the Dutch landscape changed too. It's compelling to imagine him, usually so pastoral, wrestling with the angular realities of nascent industrialism. One almost wants to reach out and encourage the artist, but of course it exists and is lovely on its own merit, in its present "incomplete" condition. Editor: Its charm definitely lies in its "unfinishedness" its tentative, yearning spirit. A perfect peek into the artistic process – Mauve playing, questioning, before all that golden light of his settled in to comfort us! Thanks for the perspective. Curator: My pleasure. Seeing that building arise and dissolve again really throws Mauve's broader oeuvre into sharp relief; like grasping the hum of hidden labor behind even his most luminous canvases.