Portret van een meisje 1916

This is Albert Hahn's pencil portrait of a girl, made sometime around 1896. Look how Hahn coaxes the image out of the paper, the shading softly defining the girl’s face, clothes, and the big bow in her hair. The marks are tentative, almost like he's feeling his way, figuring it out as he goes. The physicality of Hahn's drawing is really interesting. It's all about the surface, that gentle give-and-take between the pencil and the paper. See how the lines build up, especially around her dark hair, giving it this incredible density? It’s like he's wrestling with the materiality of the graphite, trying to find the right balance between control and looseness. If you look closely at her right cheek, you can almost sense the pressure of the pencil, how Hahn layers the strokes to create a subtle sense of volume. I'm reminded a little of Käthe Kollwitz, another German artist known for her powerful, emotive drawings. Both artists share a similar sensitivity to line and tone. Art is just a conversation between practitioners across time and space, right?