Portret van een man c. 1922 - 1925

Otto Verhagen made this pencil portrait of a man on paper. Look at those soft, grey marks! You can tell he’s trying to capture the essence of the sitter and the shape of the person's face. I imagine the artist carefully studying his subject, trying to get the proportions just right, but also allowing some room for expression. Maybe they were thinking about the Old Masters, or other portraitists they admired, trying to capture something timeless about the person. It is interesting to me how the quick marks on the tie communicate the textile and a sense of pattern. The beauty of drawing is in its simplicity and directness. It's like a conversation between the artist, the subject, and the viewer. Every stroke of the pencil is an expression of the artist's hand, connecting them to a long tradition of image-making. It reminds us that artists are always in dialogue with one another across time, picking up ideas and passing them on to the next generation.