Portret van een vrouw 1906 - 1945

This is Reijer Stolk’s ‘Portret van een vrouw’, a pencil sketch held at the Rijksmuseum. Look at the hatching, all those lines building up the face, figuring out the form – the artist must have gone over and over it, feeling their way into the shape. I imagine Stolk, pencil in hand, really looking, trying to capture something of the sitter, not just how she looks, but who she is. It feels so intimate, like he’s right there, inches away, studying every detail. See how the eyes are closed, or are they? Maybe she’s just daydreaming, lost in thought. It reminds me of other portrait sketches, by artists like Lucian Freud, where the process is so visible. You can see the artist grappling with the subject, trying to pin down something elusive. And that’s what makes it so engaging, that sense of searching, questioning, never quite arriving at a fixed answer. It’s like Stolk is inviting us to join him in the act of seeing, of trying to understand another person.