Christus met kruis en huilende vrouw 1924

Jan Toorop made this drawing, Christus met kruis en huilende vrouw, with chalk, in 1925. There’s this incredible sense of rawness, it feels like Toorop’s really digging into the surface, right? The marks are so immediate, so full of feeling. You can almost feel his hand moving across the paper. Look at the way he’s built up the tones, especially around the eyes of the weeping woman. It’s like he’s trying to capture not just her sadness, but also the weight of the world. And the way the chalk catches the light gives it this luminous quality, like there’s a hidden source of hope, even in the midst of all that grief. You can really see this direct emotional response. This reminds me of Paula Modersohn-Becker, her raw emotional style, but Toorop's is a bit more gothic. It’s just a reminder that art is an ongoing conversation, always reaching back and moving forward at the same time.