Georg Brandes 1925

Lovis Corinth made this portrait of Georg Brandes with oil on canvas. I can almost feel the energy of Corinth's brushstrokes, how he's built up this image bit by bit. There are these thick daubs of white and grey that suggest Brandes's hair, like he’s captured a fleeting thought right there on the canvas. You can see how the paint sits up on the surface, creating this gorgeous texture. I wonder what Corinth was thinking as he painted. Was he trying to capture Brandes’s intellectual intensity? Or perhaps he was just fascinated by the way light fell across his face? There’s a sense of immediacy here, as if Corinth wanted to convey a moment of pure observation. I am fascinated by the way Corinth uses color to create form. It reminds me of the work of other painters like Manet or Soutine, who were also interested in capturing the vitality of life through paint. It’s like they’re all in conversation, bouncing ideas off each other across time and space. Painting is a form of embodied expression, inviting us to see the world in new and unexpected ways.