Ansigtsprofil af NLS mor 1864 - 1941

This is Niels Larsen Stevns’ sketch of his mother's face in profile, made with pencil, probably sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It's a simple sketch, all about line and shape. The marks are tentative, searching, like the artist is feeling out the contours of his mother's face. Look at the way the lines are layered, built up, not quite meeting, suggesting a kind of vulnerability and intimacy. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the page, trying to capture something essential about his mother's presence. The texture of the paper, aged and worn, adds another layer of feeling to the piece, a sense of time passing. It reminds me of the early portrait drawings of Paula Modersohn-Becker, intimate studies of those closest to her. Art, like memory, is often about piecing together fragments, embracing the incomplete.