Jehan Rictus 1914

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen made this drawing, this portrait of Jehan Rictus, in 1919. What a symphony of tiny hatching marks! You can almost see Steinlen in his studio bent over the plate, pushing the needle this way and that, building up the darks and leaving the paper peeking through for the light. I wonder what it was like to be Steinlen, scratching away at the metal, trying to capture the essence of Rictus. Did he listen to him read poetry aloud? Did he have a coffee and a cigarette while he worked? I can imagine the scratch of the drypoint needle, almost like a whisper, as he built up the image line by line, a map of tiny marks, each one deliberate, each one contributing to the whole. The density of the strokes feels like the density of the air in the room! Etching, drawing, painting… they're all just different ways of having a conversation with the world, and with each other.