Painter and a model 1923

Tadeusz Makowski painted this scene of a painter and a model in oil paint. The tones are mostly warm browns and creams, but there's this pop of bright blue in the painter's smock that just grabs your eye, like a little secret. Look at the texture, all that thick impasto! You can almost feel the bristles of the brush dragging across the canvas. It’s like Makowski wasn’t just painting an image, but building a world out of layers and layers of paint. Notice how the light catches the edges of the brushstrokes, especially on the drapery to the right - it gives everything a kind of pulsating energy. I am drawn to the faces in the portraits on the right. The artist has rendered them in such a way that they are facing inwards, perhaps to reflect the process of creation. Makowski reminds me a little of Paula Modersohn-Becker, who also painted intimate portraits with a strong sense of materiality. Both artists seem to be saying, "Here is the world, but also here is the paint, and here is the hand that made it all."