Portret van een jongen, staand bij een stoel 1889 - 1925

This cabinet card photograph of a young boy posing by a chair was created by Josephus Hendrikus Petrus Coppens. I find myself drawn to the textures here: the slightly blurred quality of the sepia tones, which give the image a hazy, dreamlike atmosphere, and the way the light catches the edges of the chair and the boy’s ruffled collar. The boy's solemn expression and slightly awkward pose, with one hand resting on the chair, adds to the overall feeling of vulnerability. There’s an incredible tension in the image as a whole, the composition seems to be balanced, yet the subject is slightly off-center. This kind of off-kilter balance reminds me a little of some of the portrait work of someone like Alice Neel. Both artists capture something of the human condition in their work. Art isn’t just about what we see, but how we see it, how we feel it.