Vrouw die op een stoel naast een wieg zit 1887 - 1920

Albert Roelofs made this lovely, small painting of a woman sitting by a cradle with paint on paper sometime between the late 19th and early 20th century. Imagine Roelofs applying this buttery yellow paint, so thick and creamy you can almost smell it. It is a yellow that's trying to be light, but somehow it's also heavy. Perhaps he mixed it himself, adjusting the hues to match the interior lighting of the scene he witnessed. What could he have been thinking as he painted? Maybe about the quiet, watchful hours spent in the tender presence of new life, the yellow the colour of sunshine or of hope, thinly spread. You can see how the yellow paint has been applied in broad, soft strokes. It’s as though Roelofs wanted to capture not just what he saw, but also the feeling, the atmosphere of the room, the weight of the new mother's endless quiet focus. We’re all in conversation with the past, and it's through these conversations that art keeps evolving, changing, speaking to us anew.