Portrait de Claude Monet c. 1890

Pierre-Auguste Renoir captured this likeness of Claude Monet with charcoal on paper. It’s a study in contrasts, isn't it? Note the stark difference in the rendering of Monet's face versus his beard. The face is softly modeled with subtle gradations of tone suggesting volume and form, whereas the beard is a frenzy of hatching, dense and wild. This duality might reflect the Impressionist project itself: a balance between observation and expressive freedom. The loose handling of the charcoal suggests a fleeting moment, an ‘impression’ quickly captured, which was central to the Impressionist aesthetic. However, it moves beyond mere representation. The hatching technique almost dissolves the form into pure texture, challenging fixed notions of portraiture and inviting us to consider the materiality of the artwork itself. In its formal tension, the drawing destabilizes conventional portraiture. The raw, expressive marks point towards a modern sensibility, one that values the process and surface of art as much as the subject it portrays.