Portret van Gustave Marie Verspyck 1897 - 1936

This is Theodorus Henricus Kerstel’s portrait of Gustave Marie Verspyck, somewhere between the late 19th and early 20th century. Look closely. The artist has built up the figure with hundreds of tiny marks. Each mark is so deliberate, hatching and cross-hatching, to build up the tone, to capture the weight and texture of the General's face and uniform. Imagine Kerstel, hunched over his work, his brow furrowed in concentration. The weight of those medals! It must have taken hours of painstaking work to capture each tiny detail. I wonder if Kerstel felt the weight of history bearing down on him as he worked. As painters we all face this. You can see the influence of old masters in the tonal precision and the emphasis on form, but there's also a freshness, a lightness of touch that feels very modern, as if Kerstel is in conversation with his predecessors, reinterpreting their techniques for a new era. Painters are always talking to one another, across time and space, taking inspiration and pushing boundaries. We stand on the shoulders of giants, but we also forge our own path, finding new ways to see and to represent the world.