Old Man Smoking His Pipe 1907

Albrecht Anker made this painting of an old man smoking his pipe, probably in the late 19th century. Look at how he’s built the image with lots of little brushstrokes that are almost like dots, or pixels. It feels like a really slow, careful way of building an image. The colours are mostly earthy browns and greys, and the paint is pretty thin, like watercolour. You can really see the surface of the canvas underneath. See the way Anker painted the man’s face, how he used tiny strokes of pink and grey to show the wrinkles and shadows. And those hands holding the pipe – they’re so detailed and real, with every wrinkle and vein carefully painted. The whole thing feels intimate, like Anker really saw this guy and wanted to capture him just as he was. It reminds me a bit of some of the portrait painters like Courbet, who wanted to show real people in all their messy, imperfect glory. Ultimately this is a conversation that asks us to consider art as more of an open question than a statement.