Zeeuwsch meisje 1907

Jacoba van Heemskerck rendered this young woman from Zeeland with pencil and colored crayon on paper. The soft hatching of the pale blue ground is so restrained it feels more like a breath than a mark. Looking at the subtle gradation of tone that describes the side of the young woman’s face, I think about how the simplest materials can be pushed to their expressive limit. I love that Heemskerck has left her marks so present. You can see every stroke, every decision she made to build the form. It’s like she is saying: this is how seeing feels, this is what looking looks like. The area where the decorative cap overlaps her hair is a good example of this way of working. The lines are built up like layers, and we get a sense of the artist feeling her way through the image. The frankness of her approach reminds me of Lucian Freud’s drawings. Both artists share a commitment to the material world, and an openness to the strange beauty of the everyday.