Kop van een man met een pet 1890 - 1946

Cornelis Vreedenburgh made this study of a man with a cap, probably in the early twentieth century, using a pencil on paper. The thing about a sketch like this, it's all about process: the artist is working out a question, not making a statement. You can see how Vreedenburgh built up the form of the cap with layers of hatching, like he's feeling his way around it. The collar, too, is just a scribble of lines, but somehow it suggests the texture of thick wool. I love the way the lines trail off into nothing, especially around the back of the head. It's as if the man is fading away, or maybe he was never really there in the first place. It reminds me a bit of some of Giacometti's drawings, that same sense of capturing a fleeting impression. In art, the sketch embraces the unfinished and the uncertain.