Portret van een meisje met kap (Karen?) 1874 - 1925

This is a pencil drawing of a girl wearing a bonnet, made by Jan Veth. The artist has built up the image using very delicate strokes, allowing the texture of the paper to show through. It’s a method that emphasizes the directness of the artist’s hand – a kind of performance, leaving a visible record of labor. There’s a striking contrast here: on the one hand, the subject is bourgeois, but on the other, the aesthetic suggests a different social reality altogether. Think about how this sketch relates to the tradition of portraiture, where the aim was typically to create a polished, idealized image of wealth and status. Veth turns away from that, embracing instead the material facts of graphite and paper. This approach asks us to value the process of making, and to recognize the work involved in even a seemingly effortless image. In doing so, it subtly challenges the hierarchies of art, inviting us to consider the social context in which art is created.