Portret van een onbekende man c. 1915s - 1925s

Isaac Israels made this drawing of an unknown man, and I can really imagine him making it, pencil in hand, quickly trying to capture the likeness of a man. The marks are fast, a little all over the place, but that's where the feeling lives, right? It's like he's wrestling with the image, trying to pin it down. I bet he was thinking about light and shadow, how they shape a face, give it character. You can see how the lines thicken and thin, trying to give volume to the forms, and how the quick scribbles try to give detail to his clothing. It makes me think about other artists who sketched portraits of the people around them like Van Gogh, who used his drawings to understand and connect with the human spirit, the face as a landscape of emotion. This work, it’s like a quick study, a fleeting moment captured in graphite. It reminds us that art is often about the process, the act of seeing and recording, as much as it is about the finished product.