Portret van een vrouw met een blouse met opstaande kraag 1890 - 1946

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this sketch of a woman with pencil on paper. Here we see the artist feeling their way through the subject. There are so many lines, each one searching to find the correct shape. Look at the dark hatching on the left of the blouse. Vreedenburgh presses down hard on the pencil, almost scoring the paper. Then notice the right side of the blouse. Here the marks are lighter, more tentative. There is a real push and pull in the way that the artist is building up tone and form. The woman's face is only lightly suggested, whereas the hat feels more substantial and weighty. The drawing feels so in progress, you can almost see the artist’s hand moving across the page. I see some of the earlier portrait drawings of Van Gogh in this work. There's a similar sense of the artist trying to wrestle the image from the page. It's this openness and honesty that makes it so interesting.