Ontwerp voor een glas-in-loodvenster c. 1901

This is Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof's 'Design for a Stained Glass Window,' a work on paper at the Rijksmuseum, and I'm immediately drawn to its methodical quality. The use of line, creating squares and geometric shapes, suggests a focus on process, on the act of building up an image piece by piece. Looking closer, the texture of the paper is palpable. You can almost feel the grain beneath the precision of the drawn lines. There's something about the way the graphite sits on the surface, not quite opaque, that gives the design a ghostly, ethereal quality. See how in the bottom section, the grid is less defined, as though fading into the background? It's a beautiful moment of ambiguity within the rigid structure. Dijsselhof's drawing reminds me a bit of Hilma af Klint's preparatory studies for paintings – both artists exploring the intersection of geometry and spirituality. This piece invites us to consider the connections between planning and intuition, between the grid and the boundless possibilities of the imagination.