Knotwilg 1825 - 1882

Curator: Oh, this pulls me right in. There’s a sort of quietude in it, a feeling of… knowing, I suppose. Editor: That's Jacobus Ludovicus Cornet's etching, “Knotwilg”, likely created sometime between 1825 and 1882. You can find it here in the Rijksmuseum collection. It’s quite small, and the details might need a closer look, but… tell me more about that “knowing.” Curator: It's like that tree has witnessed it all. Its gnarled form and sparse branches against the old fence tell a story of resilience, even survival, right? Almost as if time is layered within those marks. And what looks like falling leaves adds another delicate touch. Editor: The realist landscape captures an intimate moment, doesn’t it? In his time, and now, we tend to isolate images of landscapes as commodities, or decorations, and certainly, in painting, we aggrandize nature in particular ways... but with an etching? What's the feeling there, do you think? Curator: There is an accessible humility. It lacks the heroic. And it has some kind of quiet political resonance too, for what has it lived through? Perhaps that is why there’s a kind of knowing in the tree itself. It has witnessed changing seasons and societal upheavals, quietly existing, offering no answers. Just being. Editor: Right. This piece entered our collection as part of a bequest. That story, of who owns the images, and what we chose to preserve speaks to the wider political life of landscape too. I'm just saying that these seemingly tranquil moments… can be so telling of who we were then. Curator: It is precisely that interplay between simplicity and the subtle suggestion of narratives that makes it special, isn’t it? Perhaps its tiny scale only strengthens that sense. We project ourselves and find universal meaning. It is simply marvelous! Editor: Yes, seeing it now through that intimate, personal lens really gives it something that cold historic fact sometimes misses. Thanks for illuminating that.