La jeune malade 1903

Henri Fantin-Latour made this image, La jeune malade, using what looks like charcoal or maybe soft graphite. It's all about marks, searching and tentative. I can imagine Fantin-Latour circling the figure, trying to capture something fleeting. It feels like he’s building up the image, not with solid forms, but with these layers of wispy strokes. A smudge there, a line here, slowly coaxing the figure out of the ground. Look at the arms raised above the figure's head. There's a real tenderness there, a sense of lightness and vulnerability. The figure is literally made up of marks, it gives it this feeling of fragility, like it could disappear if you breathe on it. Fantin-Latour was always questioning how to make an image, much like Degas who was a contemporary. It's like they were both wrestling with the same questions, pushing each other, and figuring it out as they went. That's what's so cool about art.