Waterval 1874 - 1875

Curator: This drawing from around 1874-75 is called "Waterval," and it’s by Willem Cornelis Rip. It’s a landscape executed in pencil. Editor: Immediately, there's a stillness that belies the subject matter. A waterfall is usually kinetic, but here, it's almost a study in grayscale meditation. I mean, feel the cool, muted tones—a somber elegance pervades the whole scene. Curator: Interesting take. Considering Rip’s broader artistic practice within the Hague School, we might read that muted tonality as reflective of the shifting political and social landscape of the Netherlands at the time. Think about how industrialization was changing the landscape. Editor: Right, but also, consider how the waterfall is depicted: the water seems to blur or melt into the rocks beneath. Like some strange melding of earth and sky. There's something really… ephemeral about it, you know? Like a fleeting memory. Or maybe, just a rainy Tuesday afternoon, viewed with a melancholy disposition. Curator: Yes, and perhaps even more interesting, what is left out. There is not even one human being in sight in a composition entirely about the relationship between land and water. That exclusion is not a passive artistic decision. Rip might be commenting on human engagement with, and perhaps encroachment on, the natural world. The emptiness becomes quite profound. Editor: Huh. You see absence, I guess. I was so absorbed with the soft touch of the pencil! Like fingers barely caressing the paper, trying to catch a dream before it evaporates. It all comes across as very intimate. Curator: Indeed. Intimacy can also be a form of social critique, right? Who gets to experience this private encounter? Whose access to nature is privileged, and at what cost? It pushes us to examine systems of power, class and access to natural resources. Editor: Whoa. That’s… deep. But hey, whether we're contemplating nature’s fleeting beauty or capitalism's cruel inequities, it all kinda flows into the same river, doesn't it? Curator: Exactly!