Portret van een onbekend meisje 1878 - 1931

Heinrich Krabbé made this lithograph portrait of an unknown girl at an unknown date. What's interesting here is the softness of the image, the colours are so gentle and the marks are really subtle - Krabbé is exploring a gentler way of making, creating a softness and perhaps even an innocence. Look closely and you'll see the lithographic crayon has created a grainy texture, it's not quite a painting but it is more handmade than a photograph. What this creates is a feeling of dreaminess. The colour palette is limited, almost monochromatic, and our eye is drawn to the girl's face, in particular to her bright blue eyes which seem to hint at her inner world. The bow in her hair is very dark, an almost abstract shape, it contrasts with the rest of the piece and almost doesn't belong, but I think it's touches like this that make the work so special. It's interesting to think of how this piece relates to the work of someone like Paula Modersohn-Becker, who also had a knack for painting portraits with a similarly quiet quality.