Portret van een man, van voren 1872 - 1931

Willem de Zwart made this portrait of a man with pencil on paper. The way the graphite softly blooms on the page feels immediate, as if we’re watching the drawing emerge. The weave of the paper and the smudging of the pencil create a kind of atmospheric haze around the face. See the way the lines around his suit are sharper and more defined? Compared to the soft lines of the face, it almost seems like he's fading into the background. The process is laid bare, nothing is obscured, we can see all the artist's decisions, revisions, and hesitations right there on the page. It reminds me of drawings by Manet, a searching, unvarnished, and kind of fragile encounter with another person. Neither drawing nor painting can ever really capture a person, but maybe that’s the point, it’s more like an approximation.