Karikatuur van Leo Gestel en zijn vrouw 1891 - 1941

This is a small, tender watercolor caricature by Leo Gestel portraying himself with his wife, using a limited palette of earth tones. I can imagine Gestel hunched over a table, quickly sketching with a sense of humor. There's a lightness of touch, a looseness that feels casual and intimate, like a private joke shared between the artist and his paper. He’s captured something essential here about himself and his wife with an almost childlike simplicity. The brown washes create depth and shadow, while the sparse linear details define the features. The bold, simple outline of the figures creates a sense of solidity. Those big, unblinking eyes—they're like windows into their souls, innocent and knowing all at once. Gestel, like many artists, was probably thinking about how to capture the essence of a person, not just their likeness. This piece reminds me that artists are always in conversation with each other, borrowing and riffing off ideas across time. Painting, in its purest form, can be an embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.