Portræt af en mand med en høj hat i den ene hånd 1897 - 1949

This is Robert Storm Petersen’s "Portrait of a Man with a Top Hat in One Hand," made with ink on paper. There’s a real casualness in the way it's made, the kind of freedom that comes from knowing exactly what you want to do. Look at how the heavy, almost cartoonish lines define the man's features and clothing with such playful confidence. The stark contrast between the black ink and the white paper gives it this bold, graphic quality. It's all about the line here, how it thickens and thins to suggest form and shadow. Notice the way the ink bleeds slightly in places, especially around the man's coat collar, giving a sense of depth and texture to the image. The man’s expression is interesting; the smile looks slightly artificial, perhaps even a bit menacing. You could compare this drawing to the work of Philip Guston, who also embraced a kind of rough-and-ready figuration in his later work. It's like Petersen is saying, "Here's a face, here's a body, now you figure out the rest."