Brief aan Pieter Haverkorn van Rijsewijk Possibly 1900 - 1902

This is a letter, dated 1900, by Jozef Israëls, ink on paper. Look at that handwriting! It's a whole performance. I love how the pressure varies, thick and thin like a heartbeat. It’s like he's dancing with the pen, a controlled kind of chaos. You can feel the writer’s hand, his breath almost. The ink soaks into the paper, leaving a trace, a shadow. I’m drawn to the ‘J’ in Jozef at the bottom, how the flourish loops back, like a signature on life itself. It reminds me of Cy Twombly’s scribbles, that sense of endlessness, of art as a conversation with yourself and the world. This letter is more than just words; it’s a drawing, a map of a mind in motion. Art, in the end, is always an open question.