Portret van Jo Bauer-Stumpff Possibly 1937 - 1938

This portrait of Jo Bauer-Stumpff was made by Richard Nicolaüs Roland Holst using chalk on paper. Looking at the dense, wiry hatching of the dark grey chalk lines, I can imagine Holst working at this, stroke after stroke. I see him squinting at his subject, Jo, trying to capture her likeness and her spirit, her very being. I feel for Holst here, I really do. Portraiture can be so hard. How do you get another person down on paper? How do you suggest their inner life? I imagine Holst looking back and forth between his drawing and his sitter, layering on the marks, building up the image. He’s finding her form with those lines, searching, questing. The very act of drawing becomes an act of inquiry. And for me, looking at it now, I feel like I'm also searching, also questioning, trying to see what Holst saw. This is the magic of mark making. This is the conversation that artists have with one another through time, an embodied exchange of ideas, and feelings, expressed through form, line, and tone.