A Man and a Woman 1909

Oluf Hartmann made this little oil sketch, *A Man and a Woman*, sometime around the turn of the century, right before he died at only 31 years old. I love the way he's just laying down the foundations of a painting – all the searching and feeling-out that goes into the beginning of a piece. Look at how the figures are built up out of these cool, grey-green tones. It's all very fluid and suggestive, nothing too solid or defined. You can see where he's wiped away paint, reworked the contours, trying to find the right form. The way he's smudging and blending the paint creates this hazy, dreamlike atmosphere that draws you in. There is this wonderful passage in the skirt of the woman on the left where the paint is so swirly and loose, it almost dissolves into abstraction. Hartmann reminds me a bit of someone like Paula Modersohn-Becker, another artist who died too young, who was also trying to find a new way to represent the human figure, something less polished, more raw and immediate. It’s like we’re catching a glimpse of their inner worlds.