Sous La Botte 1915

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen made this drawing, Sous La Botte, with pencil on paper. Look at the quickness of the strokes. It’s as if he’s thinking aloud, the pencil barely touching the page, capturing a soldier standing over a fallen figure. There’s an urgency in the lines, a raw immediacy that speaks to the heat of the moment, or perhaps a memory of one. I imagine Steinlen, hunched over his paper, wrestling with the image, trying to pin down something fleeting yet powerful. The lines are spare, economical almost, yet they convey so much tension and weight. See how the soldier’s stance is so rigid, so upright, compared to the limpness of the figure beneath him? It reminds me of Käthe Kollwitz’s work, that same unflinching gaze at the realities of conflict and oppression. Artists like Steinlen and Kollwitz, they’re not just depicting scenes, they’re bearing witness. They’re inviting us to bear witness too.