Portrait 1936

This portrait by Tove Jansson is made with oil paint and features a person in a blue room. I can imagine Jansson starting with a light sketch, blocking in the shapes, adding layers of color, one after the other, to bring the figure into focus. I can almost feel her there in that blue room, contemplating the person she’s painting. The surface is built up with small, almost hesitant strokes, especially on the clothes hanging in the background. I wonder if the model was cold, or if they were friends, or if she was simply trying to capture a sense of interiority. Those blues and reds are such a mood. That gesture of the hands, clasped so formally, creates an emotional tension, like a silent question posed to the viewer. It reminds me of other portrait painters like Alice Neel, who captured something of the inner lives of their subjects. Painting is a process of exchange and dialogue and it shows here.