Brief aan Anna Dorothea Dirks 1875 - 1929

This letter to Anna Dorothea Dirks was written by Isaac Israels, probably in 1926, and it’s all speedy, fluid marks. I can almost see him at his desk, hand flying across the page, ink bleeding slightly into the paper. You know, there’s a certain rhythm to handwriting, a kind of physical dance. I wonder what Israels was like, what he was thinking as he wrote this letter. The curves and loops of the script, the way the letters lean into each other. It’s like a little performance, a gesture frozen in time. I guess, in a way, it's like painting—laying down marks, building up layers of meaning, and letting the materiality of the medium, in this case ink, do its thing. Each stroke is a decision, a feeling made visible. Like a conversation between the artist and the page, you know? All artists are in ongoing conversations, inspiring each other across time. We make decisions, embrace uncertainty, and hope that someone, somewhere, will see something in it, even if it’s not what we intended.