Brief aan jonkheer Hendrik Teding van Berkhout (1879-1969) Possibly 1932

This letter was written in 1932 by Frederika Henriëtte Broeksmit. There’s something so immediate and intimate about handwriting, you know? Seeing the loops and the pressure, you get a real sense of the person behind the words. The ink, faded and delicate, almost feels like a whisper from the past. I love how the words crowd each other, like thoughts tumbling out, unedited. Look at how Broeksmit’s letters dance and lean, full of energy. It makes you wonder about the texture of the paper, the scratch of the pen, the light in the room where she sat writing. Each stroke is a little performance, a gesture capturing a moment in time. I’m reminded of Cy Twombly, another artist who saw writing as drawing, and drawing as a kind of thinking. It’s all connected. Art is just one long, messy conversation across time, isn’t it?