Het Javaanse meisje Siti, zittend 1921 - 1922

Jan Veth made this drawing of a seated Javanese girl, Siti, with pencil on paper. The whole thing has this tentative, searching quality. You can almost feel Veth trying to capture her likeness, erasing and redrawing the lines of her face and hands. Look closely and you can see the ghost marks where the pencil has been, a whole history of mark making is etched into the page. The girl's posture is inward, focused on the task in her hands. The soft shading gives her face a gentle, contemplative expression. I love the way he’s rendered the fabric of her clothes, those soft lines making the material seem almost weightless. It's like Veth is feeling his way through the image, and inviting us to do the same. This drawing reminds me a little of Whistler's subtle portraits. Both artists use a kind of understated elegance to capture the quiet beauty of their subjects. Art’s always like that, a conversation across time and space.