Modelstudie af mand med opløftede arme 1890 - 1916

This drawing was made by J.A. Jerichau, and you can see it there on the paper, how things emerge! Look at the powdery marks: reddish-brown and soft greys. It feels like a fleeting vision, a study of form and movement. I can just imagine Jerichau, charcoal in hand, rapidly capturing the pose, trying to nail the way the light falls across the figure. The artist is feeling their way through the human form, simplifying, abstracting, letting the essence of the gesture come through. And then you get the rubbed-out marks, the pentimenti; the ghost of a figure in the background. You can sense the hand of the artist hovering, correcting, revising. It reminds me a little of Rodin's drawings, where the figure seems to emerge from a cloud of marks. It's like Jerichau is in conversation with other artists. It’s such a beautiful reminder that art is about process, about searching, about trying to capture something that's always just out of reach.