Vignet met een vos (Reinaert) c. 1910

Curator: This etching from around 1910 is called "Vignet met een vos (Reinaert)" by Bernard Willem Wierink. You can see it here at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: It feels instantly…old-fashioned. Like a bookplate from a collection of dusty, leather-bound tomes. And the fox is staring right at you! Curator: The fox is a potent symbol in folklore. Often representing cunning and trickery, he invites a level of symbolic interpretation that plays on the tension between instinct and intelligence. Here, positioned atop the "vignet," he is an emblematic figure for this image. Editor: Exactly! I mean, those decorative arrow-like shapes are just beautiful. But they almost feel like a trap…pointing inwards toward that central nameplate, and that rather sly-looking fox overseeing it all. There's a latent danger here. What is 'Inleidsel' anyway? Curator: I understand how the overall symmetry and focused fox's stare suggest an underlying danger. “Inleidsel” is an older Dutch word suggesting ‘introduction,’ and this piece seems intended as a title plate, likely for an edition of the medieval tales of Reynard the Fox. Editor: Reynard the Fox! Now everything makes so much sense! It's that ambiguity again, where it feels refined and savage at the same time. It almost mirrors how we idealize nature but are secretly terrified of it. It's making my imagination spin wild. I appreciate Wierink pointing me back to such ancient fables of the land! Curator: The Art Nouveau style of Wierink's work enhances this tension through those highly decorative elements, which feel at odds with the subject's inherent wildness, playing on how civilized people project moralistic tendencies onto the beast world. The "aged paper," so-called here, really makes it all that more impactful. Editor: It does indeed. This piece offers a surprisingly thoughtful portal back to older stories about ourselves and a fox, one that isn’t saccharine but raw with an edge. Curator: For me, it underscores the lasting appeal of archetypes—how these visual cues resonate even across centuries, triggering something primal in our understanding.