Portret van schrijver Jan Hofker Possibly 1905 - 1909

This is Willem Witsen’s portrait of writer Jan Hofker, in the Rijksmuseum, and it’s made using chalk or maybe charcoal. You can imagine Witsen’s hand moving fast, figuring out the form of the head and that heavy-looking hat. I like to think about what the artist is going through. Here, I imagine Witsen thinking hard about how to represent his friend, the writer. Is he trying to capture something of the writer’s soul in this quick sketch? It feels like an intimate moment, just the artist and his model, trying to understand each other through the act of drawing. That single stroke defining the hat's edge is so confident, while the shading around the face feels softer, more tentative. It’s a dance between certainty and doubt, a conversation between the artist and the paper. It is reminiscent of other sketch portraits by Dutch artists. Each mark is a thought, an idea, a feeling made visible. The artwork suggests we are all in this together!