Portret van Justinus Kerner 1822 - 1843

Curator: Anton Duttenhofer rendered this pencil drawing, “Portret van Justinus Kerner,” sometime between 1822 and 1843. It captures the likeness of Justinus Kerner, a German poet and medical writer associated with Romanticism. Editor: There's a kind of subdued melancholy about this portrait, isn’t there? The soft shading gives it a ghostly quality, almost as if he’s fading into the paper. Curator: The lightness definitely serves to enhance the Romantic sensibility; it echoes the artistic movement's focus on the inner life. Notice how Duttenhofer used the subtlest pencil strokes to define Kerner’s face, particularly around the eyes and mouth. The details really convey an intensity, yet he seems distant, almost ethereal. Editor: Indeed. Considering Romanticism’s connection with the rise of nationalism and individualism, the artist here gives prominence to an emerging middle class. He wears relatively simple clothing; however, we see subtle suggestions of bourgeois ascendance. Curator: The visual language certainly resonates with a rising social order. We can see the tradition of portraiture being deployed to suggest social and economic mobility. Though simple in its rendering, the overall visual effect is about authority and status. Editor: Yes, though even with the light pencil strokes and Romantic idealization, there is an element of the unsettling here. Duttenhofer isn't presenting an idealized vision, per se, but offers something less defined and altogether less straightforward, challenging those same assumptions about bourgeois authority that the composition appears to embrace. Curator: The very materiality, the fact that it is pencil on paper, lends it a transitory, ephemeral quality. A lasting impression fashioned through impermanent materials… it underscores our own, as well as Kerner’s, ultimate fate. Editor: A really remarkable capturing of a particular moment in the making. So many things unsaid, a potent reminder of how power is asserted through understated representation.