Zittende vrouw met sigaret 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing of a seated woman with a cigarette, we don't know when, using a pencil on paper. The marks are immediate, quick, and searching. You can almost feel the artist circling around the form, trying to pin down the essence of the figure. Look at the lightness of touch, how the pencil barely kisses the page in places, leaving a ghost of a line. Then, notice the darker, more confident strokes that define her face and hair. It's like a dance, a back-and-forth between certainty and doubt. The physicality of the medium here is so evident, there's no attempt to hide the process. It's all there on the surface, naked and vulnerable. The lines around the woman's eyes are particularly telling. They're soft, almost hesitant, suggesting a vulnerability beneath the surface. It reminds me of some of Degas's drawings, that same sense of capturing a fleeting moment, an unguarded expression. Art is such an open-ended conversation, isn't it?