Unidentified Man 1916

Robert Henri made this pencil drawing of an Unidentified Man, we don’t know exactly when, but sometime before 1929. Look at the looping marks, the scratchy lines, and how the portrait seems to come out of the page—the hand of the artist really comes through. I can imagine Henri in the moment, quickly capturing the man's likeness, a flurry of lines defining the form, the essence of his sitter. Those bold strokes that make up the man's shoulder almost feel like they’re holding him back, while the face pushes forward with its strong moustache. I’ve seen similar marks in other drawings by Henri, that same quick energy, as if he’s trying to capture a fleeting moment. It reminds me of other portraitists like Van Gogh or Alice Neel, who weren't just recording what they saw, but how they saw it. Each artist is in dialogue with the ones that came before and will come after, adding their own flavour to the ongoing conversation. Painting is never really finished, is it? It's an open-ended question we keep asking each other across time.