Portret van Karel Petrus Cornelis de Bazel c. 1918 - 1922

Jan Veth drew this portrait of Karel Petrus Cornelis de Bazel with pencil on paper. There’s a tentative quality to the marks in this drawing, as though Veth is feeling around for the subject, trying to capture not just likeness, but something of the inner person too. See how the lines around the eye are softly smudged, whereas the beard is described with much darker, more decisive strokes? I feel like the drawing captures a thinking process; the artist puzzling over the relationship between what he sees and what he knows. Look at the profusion of lines used to build up the sitter’s hair, a mass of swirling energy, which seems to both contain and contrast with the stillness of the face. It’s like Veth is suggesting that the mind is a wild, untamed place, full of hidden depths and unexpected turns. Think of other artists like Lucian Freud, who use drawing as a means of probing the human psyche. Like Freud, Veth seems less interested in surface appearances than in revealing something deeper, more complex about his subject.