Study of a Halfdressed Girl 1907

Harald Giersing made this modest painting, Study of a Halfdressed Girl, with oil on canvas at an unknown date. Here, the muted palette feels like a rehearsal, a study in light and shadow before the main performance. You can almost feel Giersing figuring things out as he goes. The brushstrokes are confident, yet there's a tentative quality too, as if he's gently coaxing the image into being. Notice the way he renders the fabric of her top, how each dab and stroke builds up to create texture and volume. There's a real sense of the physical presence of the paint, it's not just a representation, it's an object in itself. This tension between representation and abstraction is something that you also see in the work of someone like Manet, where the surface of the painting is just as important as the thing being depicted. Art isn't just about what you see, it's about how you see it.