Untitled (Portrait of a Young Boy) c. 1939

Robert Tabor made this sensitive portrait of a young boy with drypoint on paper. The technique, with its reliance on a sharp needle scratching directly into the plate, lends itself to a more tentative kind of mark making. It feels like Tabor is feeling his way into the image, line by line. Look at the hatching behind the boy's head, see how the light is built up with layers of dark marks. There's a real tenderness to the way the shadows fall across the boy's face, and in the soft focus given to the sailor's collar. All of this detail lends to a sense of the boy being unknowable, his thoughts are his own. The printmaker, Mary Cassatt, comes to mind, with her own images of childhood. Both seem to imply that childhood is not as simple as it seems. Art is about asking questions, not providing answers, and this image leaves me with more questions than I started with.