Negotiations at the Trianon Palace, Versailles c. 1919

Jean-Louis Forain made this drawing of the negotiations at the Trianon Palace in Versailles using delicate pencil lines and bold, angular hatching. I wonder, what was it like to be Forain, sitting in the room as a visual eavesdropper? This image feels like a coded transmission from the past. He's picked out an individual in a crowd, someone leaning forward, listening intently perhaps, or maybe just tired, weary from the gravity of the moment. The figures around him are almost ghosts, captured with just a few, economical strokes. I love how the rapid, searching lines become a record of the artist's own thinking, his own attempt to grasp something fleeting. The way he layers the dark, scribbled marks on the figure's vest feels so urgent. Forain's mark-making reminds me of Daumier and Degas, fellow travelers who used drawing to dissect the theater of modern life. Like them, he transforms observation into a subjective act. He shows us how a sketch can be so much more than just a record of a scene, it can be a portal into a mind at work.