I love this small portrait and I wish I had done it myself. This is something that many artists might loath to admit, but I will.
This possesses everything I love and admire in a picture. In the most discreet way possible, it adheres to the very idea of Chiaroscuro and delivers an unusual and Modernist side of humanity. The simplistic nature of this small drawing belies a skill that could easily be overlooked by many. What does this head express?
Compare it with the Cezanne drawing of his son below. What does this expression in a more rendered and classical response? What does any portrait express?
Below, an oil portrait by Tuckson of his wife, also from the early 1950's. I know I've written about it a few years back, maybe even several times in fact because I like it so much. But that said, here is a more developed idea in oils. One might see a lot of Matisse in it, but I just see Tony Tuckson. It's wonky but inexplicably, it expresses a real humanity.
I wonder suddenly, if my strong feeling for it doesn't go back to my earliest love of all; the Fayum portraits from Egypt (below) that I saw as a child. My father had a book full of these heads and they mesmerised.
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