Portrait of a blond girl 1901

Albrecht Anker, somewhere between 1831 and 1910, painted this portrait, with what looks like oil on canvas. I'm really feeling this painting. It's a girl, maybe ten years old, against a black background. Anker's really gone to town on her hair, a beautiful map of blond curls. It reminds me of Fairfield Porter, someone else who took the time to look at domestic life and make something special. I can imagine Anker really thinking about how to get her just right. He’s using the paint almost sculpturally, building up her face with layers and layers of subtle color. Look at the way he handles the light on her cheek, the subtle shifts from pink to yellow. Those are all clues to how he was thinking, how he was trying to capture something essential about her. It's painting as an embodied expression, a conversation across time.