A Young Woman with a Necklace c. 1925

Jan Wiegers created "A Young Woman with a Necklace" using etching, and it’s like he’s having a conversation with the plate, a kind of back-and-forth we see in the final print. The warm, reddish-brown ink gives a soft, intimate feel, almost like a memory. The lines are wiry and raw, digging into the paper – you can practically feel the artist’s hand moving across the plate. Look at the way he renders the eyes, with these dark, almost worried marks, and compare them to the scratchy lines describing her arms, it’s all texture, and these different marks evoke different feelings. It reminds me a little of Paula Modersohn-Becker's portraits, especially in the frankness of the gaze and the earthy palette. What I love most is how the image embraces the imperfections of the process. It’s less about a perfect likeness and more about a moment, a feeling, captured in time.