Portrait of Rimbaud 1949

Fernand Léger painted this portrait of Rimbaud using bold lines and a playful, restricted palette of green, yellow, blue, and red. I can imagine Léger, poised with his brush, thinking about how to capture the essence of the poet, Rimbaud. Did he layer the colours wet-on-wet, or allow each to dry before applying the next? See how the graphic black outline accentuates the features, almost like a comic strip, while the planes of colour abstract the face, giving it a kind of symbolic quality. The red slash across the forehead and cheek, is it a wound? Or a flash of insight? The way Léger simplifies form relates to the work of other modernists like Picasso and Matisse, who were also reinventing portraiture at this time. There's a real sense of conversation going on between these artists, a back-and-forth about what painting can be. Ultimately, it's this kind of painterly investigation, this willingness to play and experiment, that keeps the spirit of painting alive.