Portrait of N.V.Poroshina, a pupil of N.Sklifosovsky’s school 1914

This is a portrait of N. V. Poroshina, a pupil of N. Sklifosovsky’s school, made by Zygmunt Waliszewski, using what looks like graphite on paper. I just love drawings like this – the ones that feel like the artist is thinking aloud with the pencil. You can almost see Waliszewski circling around his subject, trying to capture something essential about her. It’s like he’s not just drawing what he sees, but also what he feels or imagines about this young student. The lines are delicate and tentative, but they build up to create a really compelling image. And that slight tilt of her head, that soft focus in her eyes – it all suggests a kind of inner life, a thoughtfulness. It reminds me a little of some of those early modernist portraits, where the artist is less interested in perfect representation and more interested in capturing a mood or a feeling. And it makes you wonder about the connection between artists. They’re all in conversation with each other, you know?