Quand le boche se retire… c. 1917

Jean-Louis Forain made this drawing, Quand le boche se retire… with crayon, and it feels immediate, like he’s working right in front of our eyes. I can see him thinking through the marks, shifting the weight of the figures, trying to get the balance right. There's a real sense of weight in the drawing. I can feel the weight of the sack, the weight of the woman's grief, and the terrible, heavy weight of war. Look at how he uses the lines to create a sense of movement and energy, but also to convey the exhaustion and despair of the people. I love how he used a single, curving line to suggest the woman's arm, reaching desperately for the sack. Forain was a master of capturing the nuances of human emotion, like Daumier, but with a slightly different feel. Artists like them both remind me that we are always in conversation with one another, building upon the ideas and techniques of those who came before. And that’s how art evolves: through a constant exchange of ideas, experiments, and creative responses.