Female Model 1930

This is Vilhelm Lundstrom’s ‘Female Model’, painted with oil on canvas. The colors are pretty muted – a kind of dusky, dark teal blue for the background, and then this ochre color to model the woman’s body. I can imagine Lundstrom, building up the figure with these soft tonal shifts. It’s not about light and shadow exactly, but about volume and form, which gives this female figure a strong presence, despite her anonymity. I see how the hair is just a dark mass, and her eyes are these slightly concave planes. It’s like the essential idea of a person, but not an actual portrait. The painting has this stillness to it. I imagine Lundstrom thinking a lot about what it means to see, and how to render this experience through paint. He looked at other paintings too, and there’s something that reminds me of other artists, like Cezanne. But this piece has a kind of quiet, Nordic mood. It reminds me that, as painters, we're all constantly looking, learning, and conversing through our work.