Portrait study of a wife, a sketch to "Strange Garden" 1903

Józef Mehoffer made this oil on canvas sketch of his wife, a study for his painting "Strange Garden," sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. I love the way Mehoffer has captured his wife's gaze – it feels so intimate, like a shared secret between the artist and his muse. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the canvas, building up the form with these loose, gestural brushstrokes. I imagine Mehoffer standing before his easel, squinting at his wife, trying to capture her essence in paint. There’s this muted palette of blues, greens, and fleshy pinks which gives the painting a dreamlike, otherworldly quality. The way the light catches her face, the soft shadows under her eyes, it's all so tender and evocative. This sketch feels connected to the work of other artists, like Vuillard or Bonnard, who were also exploring the intimate world of domestic life at the time. Ultimately, I think painting is about this constant back-and-forth, artists building on each other's ideas, pushing the boundaries of what paint can do.