Baron du Cartier du Marchieme 1923

Walter Tittle made this drypoint print, Baron du Cartier du Marchieme, in 1923. I see the mark-making as a kind of scratching, like thinking out loud with the tip of a needle, where you are looking for the form by touch. The surface is alive with tiny burrs and lines, catching the light. Look at the Baron’s mustache: with its delicate curves and insistent presence, it almost steals the show. But it’s the sketchy quality of the whole thing that really gets me. It's there in the shadow under his jaw, and it is also in how the suit hangs loosely, suggested rather than described. This feels like a conversation across time to other portraitists like John Singer Sargent, with a similar sense of immediacy and lively character. In the end, it remains beautifully unresolved – a fleeting impression of a man, caught in a web of lines, light, and shadow.