Staande man met hoed 1770 - 1825

This small drawing, 'Standing Man with Hat' was made by Simon Andreas Krausz, probably in the late 1700s or early 1800s. It is rendered in pencil on paper. Now, that may seem like a humble combination of materials, and it is, but it tells us something important about the artist’s intention. Pencil is a very direct medium, and the small scale suggests a sketch made in the moment, a fleeting observation rather than a grand statement. Krausz used the pencil to capture a figure with just a few lines, emphasizing the man's posture and the way his hat and coat define his silhouette. The sketch seems unfinished and ephemeral, but there is a lot of skill involved in being this economical. It invites us to think about how different marks of quality—grandness, ambition, and perfection— are valued in art history, and the quiet accomplishment, and indeed the social observation, that we see here.