Edvard Westermarck 1913

Magnus Enckell painted this portrait of Edvard Westermarck, but the painting's date is unknown. The colours feel both vivid and subdued at the same time, don’t they? The way the paint is applied, in these distinct, almost mosaic-like strokes, suggests a process of construction, a kind of building-up to an image. There's such a push and pull between the flat surface of the canvas and the illusion of depth. I keep looking at the way Enckell renders the folds of the jacket with these confident, almost brutal strokes of purples and browns. It's like he’s wrestling with the paint, trying to capture not just what he sees but what he feels. Then there's that golden object behind him, glowing like an idea. This portrait feels a bit like a nod to both traditional portraiture and the more avant-garde movements of the time, like the Fauves. It's this conversation between the past and the present that makes art so endlessly fascinating.