Portrait of an Older Man 1913

Robert Falk made this painting of an older man with oil on canvas, but we don’t know exactly when. What strikes me first is the colour – a range of greens and blues, but then punctuated by these incredible accents of red and yellow, like that lemon, and the little touches in the wallpaper. It's not a straight up realistic painting, but a painting about painting. Look at the way he builds up the surface. The paint is fairly thick, and you can see the marks of the brush, especially in the background. It's like he's not trying to hide the process, but instead showing us how the image comes together, layer by layer. Take the hands, they almost look unfinished, but that rawness gives them a real sense of life. It's a great example of how a painting can be more than just a picture of something, it can be an experience in itself. This painting reminds me a bit of some of Cezanne’s portraits. Both artists share a similar interest in the materiality of paint, and how it can be used to create form and depth. But where Cezanne is perhaps more concerned with structure, Falk seems more interested in feeling, in capturing a fleeting moment of human presence.