Portret van Dirk Christiaan Meijer jr. 1908

Pieter Dupont made this portrait of Dirk Christiaan Meijer Jr. using brown ink. You can really see Dupont’s process in his mark-making. It's all these tiny, little marks that create a bigger picture. The texture feels almost like a really detailed pen drawing, doesn’t it? Look at the details in the beard, for example; you can see each tiny hair, or the little ring on his finger. It’s pretty amazing. I find myself getting lost in these details. The sepia tone creates a feeling of nostalgia. It reminds me of looking through old family photos. And the way Dupont captures the light, gives the image a soft, dreamlike quality. You can see his mark-making in the background. It almost looks like it wasn’t finished, but that gives the image some depth and a sense of being there, in the same room as the portrait. I can see a kinship between this piece and the work of someone like Lucian Freud, who was also interested in capturing the human form with a directness and honesty, if not an emotional complexity.