Jean Louis Gampert c. 1920

Roger de La Fresnaye made this portrait of Jean Louis Gampert using pastel and charcoal on paper. It looks like he was working fast and trying to get down an idea, a feeling, of a person. There's something so casual about the mark-making, but it's also very deliberate, a kind of knowing shorthand that comes from really looking at the subject. You can see the charcoal lines dancing around the forms, giving them weight and volume, but also a sense of movement, of life. Look at the face. It's a web of marks that somehow cohere into a likeness. There's a confidence in the way the artist lays down the colors; not trying to blend everything perfectly, but letting the strokes exist as strokes. You could say La Fresnaye was a little bit like Derain, or even Cezanne in this piece. Like both of them, he embraces a sense of incompleteness, a kind of searching that feels very modern and open.