Portret van een man met vlinderstrikje 1920

Leo Gestel made this portrait of a man with a bow tie with charcoal and chalk on gray paper. The man's crisp attire suggests a certain social standing, but the lack of adornment is striking. This gets to the core of portraiture, which in the Netherlands, has roots in the 17th century with the rise of a powerful merchant class. The art market in that time, saw a shift away from religious imagery toward portraits and genre painting. Gestel was working in a very different period, where art institutions had developed formal means to support artistic production. What is the artist's relationship to this network of power? Gestel lived through two world wars. His work shows the influence of various movements, including Luminism, Cubism, and Expressionism. Considering these influences and the changing role of the artist, how might this portrait reflect on the relationship between the individual and society? To understand this further, one might investigate exhibition records, and letters, to see how this portrait and others were received and understood during that time.