Brief aan Jan Veth c. 1886

This letter to Jan Veth, by Jacoba Cornelia Jolles-Singels, presents an intimate glimpse into the artist’s world through the visual structure of handwriting on paper. The deep blue ink cascades across the page, creating a dense, textured field against the pale backdrop. The ascending and descending loops of the script form a rhythmic pattern, almost musical in its arrangement. Note how the handwritten form becomes a direct expression of thought, where the materiality of ink and paper challenges fixed notions of communication. The visual elements, such as the pressure of the pen strokes and the varying spaces between words, convey the immediacy and intimacy of a personal message. This piece can be seen as destabilizing conventional methods of correspondence. In that, Jolles-Singels uses handwriting not just as a means to convey information, but as an artistic assertion. The act of writing itself becomes a performance. The structure of the handwriting acts as a cultural artifact, one that encourages us to reconsider the boundaries between text and art.