Meisje met een takje in haar hand 1909 - 1911

Jan Mankes made this drawing, *Meisje met een takje in haar hand,* with pencil on paper. It’s like he’s thinking through the form, letting the lines emerge tentatively, then disappear almost as quickly. The paper has this beautiful warm, pale tone, and the pencil marks are so delicate that they feel almost breathed onto the surface. Look how the lines that define the girl’s face are so faint, yet they give her a quiet, pensive presence. The way she holds the twig, it's like she’s communing with it, lost in thought. And the hands! They’re just a few scribbled lines, but they tell you everything you need to know about tenderness. Mankes reminds me of Agnes Martin in a way, someone else who found so much in simplicity, so much poetry in the bare minimum. It's a conversation that echoes through art history, this search for essential form, for the most direct route to feeling.