Zelfportret c. 1785 - 1833

This is Jean Bernard's self-portrait, a quick sketch in graphite on paper. It's a profile view, capturing the artist with a balding head and a neatly trimmed beard. The drawing possesses an immediacy, a fleeting moment captured with economical lines. Notice how Bernard uses hatching to define the contours of his face and beard, creating a sense of volume with minimal means. The structure of the drawing, its composition, is elegantly simple, focusing all attention on the artist’s face. The cropped edges of the paper add to the feeling of an intimate fragment, a study rather than a finished work. The sketch destabilizes the traditional notion of portraiture as a formal, posed representation. Instead, it offers a glimpse into the artist's process, his self-perception rendered in swift, confident strokes. In this way, the drawing engages with modern ideas about the self as fragmented, unfixed, and always in process.