Zelfportret: B-1-1 Possibly 1941 - 1948

Cor van Teeseling made this small self-portrait with pencil on paper. The layered marks build up a kind of shadow, that wraps around the form of his face. There's something very direct and vulnerable about a drawing like this, it's so immediate. You can see the pressure of the pencil, how the artist is feeling his way through the planes of his face. Look at the way he renders the eye on the left, it's almost closed, like he's lost in thought or maybe even a little sad. The hatching marks around the cheekbone feel particularly tender, building up the form with delicate precision. It reminds me a little of some of the early self-portraits by Lucian Freud, that same intensity of looking, that desire to capture something essential about the self. But of course, drawing is always an act of interpretation, a conversation between the artist and their own image. It's never quite fixed, always open to new readings.