Portret van een onbekende man 1894 - 1913

Laurent Verwey van Udenhout made this portrait of an unknown man with what looks like graphite on paper. The mark-making is tight, controlled, and really focused. You can sense the artist trying to figure things out through close observation. The lines build up slowly, almost like a sculptor modeling form with clay. Look at the way the shadows around the eye socket are created with tiny hatched marks. It’s like the artist is feeling their way around the contours of the face. The overall effect is one of quiet intensity. The artist was clearly interested in form and structure, in a way that reminds me of some of the drawings of Ingres, especially in the precise rendering of the sitter’s hair and features, but there's also something modern in the directness and honesty of this portrait. It embraces the ambiguity of the sitter's identity.