Stående, hatteklædt klovn med store handsker, vendt mod venstre. 1908 - 1909

Othon Friesz made this pen and ink drawing of a clown on graph paper, we don't know exactly when. Friesz’s clown emerges through a series of quick, jumbled lines. It's all about the process, that searching quality we love in drawings. You can almost see the artist thinking as he goes, deciding where the hat should sit, how the gloves should balloon. The grid peeks through from underneath, a structure that the artist both relies on and playfully ignores. Look at the frantic scribbles that define the clown's lower body, a dense thicket of marks, versus the relative calm of the face. These juxtapositions create a kind of nervous energy, fitting for a clown, right? It reminds me a bit of Daumier's looser lithographs, that same embrace of the imperfect line. Ultimately, it’s not about perfection, but about capturing a fleeting moment, a feeling, a gesture.