Head of a Girl c. 1909

Thomas Wilmer Dewing captured this head of a girl with delicate strokes and a soft, muted palette. Imagine him, charcoal in hand, gently coaxing this face into being. There's something so tender in the way he renders the curve of her cheek and the subtle shading around her eyes. I bet he looked at a lot of faces and tried to get at what makes people individual. The texture is velvety, almost like a whisper, and the way the light catches her features gives her an ethereal quality. Her face emerges from the pale paper like a dream, with the bare minimum amount of lines. It reminds me of Whistler's tonalist paintings, where mood and atmosphere take precedence over precise detail. It's like they're both searching for a way to capture the fleeting beauty of a moment, a feeling, an impression. And that's what good painting is all about, right?