Portret van August Allebé 1924

Bernard Willem Wierink made this portrait of August Allebé with pencil on paper sometime in the early 20th Century. Look at those lines, so crisp and clean. You can almost feel the scratch of the pencil on the page. Wierink is really thinking about form and shadow, and how just a few marks can suggest a whole person. I bet Wierink had to keep his pencil super sharp to get those fine details, like the way the light catches on Allebé’s glasses. I wonder what it was like to sit for Wierink? To have someone staring at you so intently, trying to capture your essence with a few lines? It’s kind of intimate, right? Painters are always looking at other artists and being in conversation with them through time. It’s so amazing to see how artists build on each other's ideas. We can all bring our own experiences and interpretations to the table and find something new and meaningful in the process.