Girl Reading 1911

Lovis Corinth made this drawing of a girl reading with pencil on paper. Look at the scribbled marks all around the figure. I wonder what the artist was thinking when they made those rapid lines. Were they trying to find the right contour for the figure? Or were they trying to capture the feeling of the girl’s concentration as she reads? The pencil lines are so expressive, aren’t they? They remind me of the way that Cy Twombly made drawings. There’s a looseness and energy to them. And yet, despite the seeming messiness of the marks, the artist has managed to create a very convincing portrait of a young woman absorbed in her book. I also see how the materiality of the drawing is important. You can see the tooth of the paper, and the way that the pencil skips across its surface. It’s like the drawing is alive, constantly shifting and changing before your eyes. It's amazing how one artist can pick up a tool and make something that another artist can look at and be inspired by, even many years later.