Portret van een meisje naar links 1877 - 1950

Editor: Here we have Barbara Elisabeth van Houten's "Portrait of a Girl, Facing Left," an etching that she made sometime between 1877 and 1950. The small scale and delicate lines give it a rather intimate feel, almost like peering into someone's private thoughts. What do you make of it? Curator: Oh, that quietude just sings to me. Don't you think there's something inherently vulnerable about a portrait in profile? It reveals a softer side. Her face is turned away, lost in her world. Barbara captures her at that transient time of life, before one knows what exactly one’s purpose may be, perhaps caught at a private and very beautiful moment in time. It’s the opposite of grand, bombastic portraiture that seeks to impress. Do you feel the delicacy of the printmaking too? The gentle and soft etched lines and textures? Editor: Absolutely, I think the printmaking technique really emphasizes the gentleness. What strikes me as I look closer is a certain…modernity. Is that fair? Curator: Perfectly fair. Whilst there is that Victorian restraint there is also, what one might call, a nascent sense of expressionism, perhaps even the first flickers of modernism about to flare, I imagine. It doesn’t box the young lady into some restrictive archetype; the rawness makes it still so utterly captivating today. Editor: So, the sketch-like quality adds to the emotional resonance, would you say? Curator: Precisely. It bypasses mere representation, delving instead into capturing an emotion. Art becomes a vessel for revealing interiority rather than exterior appearance. Editor: That really does change how I see it now, from a formal portrait to an expression of inner feeling. Curator: That’s the magic, isn't it? Van Houten takes us on a journey beyond what’s plainly visible.