Standing Figure, Blue Dress 1941

Niels Larsen Stevns made this painting of a figure in a blue dress with oil on canvas, but the date of its creation is unknown. I can imagine the artist’s process involved layering and scraping paint in his attempt to capture the essence of the figure before him. The figure emerges from a backdrop of gestural marks and muted colors. The brushstrokes are bold and expressive; you can feel the artist's hand moving across the canvas, building up layers of paint, as he searches to capture the fall of light on the blue fabric. Those pink marks along the dress feel like the artist trying to find the right form – a bit like the pink underpainting I use sometimes, that gives paintings that zing. I bet Stevns worked and reworked this canvas to make something unresolved and quietly haunting. It makes me think of other painters like Bonnard, or even Vilhelm Hammershøi who also knew how to create intimate and mysterious paintings. It's all one big conversation, isn't it?