Portret van een vrouw met bril 1902 - 1908

This is a small portrait of a woman with glasses by E. v.d. Kerkhoff, and it lives at the Rijksmuseum. You know, I bet v.d. Kerkhoff spent a lot of time looking at this woman before even picking up a pencil. Like, who is this person? What's she like? How do I bring her to life? It's not about photorealism, right? It's about getting to the essence of someone. And here, the essence feels kind of quiet, thoughtful. Look at the soft rendering of her face. There's a gentleness in the way the light falls. The plaid of her dress is pretty striking. It's like the artist wants us to know she's not just a face, she's a person with a life, a style, a point of view. I mean, what was it like to be a woman in the late 19th or early 20th century? What were her dreams, her struggles? Artists today are still asking themselves these kinds of questions. We're all trying to figure out how to see, how to understand, how to connect.