A Young Girl Sewing 1915

Harald Giersing painted "A Young Girl Sewing" with oils, and it's now here at the SMK. Giersing's brushwork is so direct, almost chunky, and the greens and blues are laid down with an intensity that I just love. It’s like he's wrestling with the paint to get it just right. Look at how he renders the girl's dress – these bold strokes of blue that define the shape but also retain their own energy. There’s a real sense of process at play here. It’s not about perfection but about capturing a moment, a feeling. The way the figure merges with the background, it’s like she’s part of the very fabric of the room. And that patch of light on the sewing itself? It draws you in, makes you wonder about her world. Thinking about the company of painters Giersing keeps, I am put in mind of someone like Vuillard, in the way that the domestic space is rendered as something both familiar, yet somehow psychologically charged. The beauty of painting is that it embraces ambiguity and allows for multiple readings.