Hoofd van een jongen met een matrozenkraag, in profiel 1874 - 1945

Carel Adolph Lion Cachet made this graphite drawing of a boy’s head, sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It’s a sketch, really, with a tentative quality that I love. Look how the lines build up to create tone and shadow, especially around the hair and the sailor collar. There’s a real sense of the artist working and reworking the image, searching for the right form. See the darker lines used to define the collar against the background and then how they dissipate and soften towards the bottom of the image. The rest of the image is just sort of suggested, like a memory. This kind of open, process-oriented approach reminds me of the drawings of someone like Philip Guston, where the act of making is as important as the final image. It shows how art is a conversation, an ongoing exploration rather than a fixed statement. It’s about embracing ambiguity and letting the work evolve.