Young Woman c. 1918

This is Édouard Vuillard's sketch of a young woman, made with pencil on paper. You can see a kind of searching in the marks. It's like Vuillard is thinking through the subject, letting the pencil wander and find its way. The texture of the paper comes through; it feels intimate, like a glimpse into the artist's studio. The lines are delicate, almost tentative, but there's a sureness there too, especially in the way he captures the fall of light on her dress. I'm drawn to the loop-like mark near the bottom – is it a stray line, a doodle, or a crucial part of the composition? It's this ambiguity that keeps me looking. Vuillard reminds me a bit of Bonnard, both artists had this way of making the ordinary feel extraordinary. It's a reminder that art isn't about perfect representation, but about seeing and feeling.