About This Work

Honoring Breitner’s Little Photographs This graphite pencil drawing ‘Nude Study, after Breitner – 23-12-25’ honors Breitner’s little photographs. The one for this drawing stood out. You see, working on my Geesje Kwak series I happen to find all these little photos he took. They are very small but you can see the master’s taste for composition. Much to his defense really because he always claimed they only served as a sort of memory aid. Besides taking these pictures, the composition is entirely the artist’s own. This having said, you can claim therefor it wasn’t mine and I am the first one admit to that. Yesterday I made a quick 20 minute pre-study, waiting for my students. Just to make sure I would like to do this for real. My Additions This pre-study seemed to work but needed some my additions. First, I cropped the picture dramatically so the focus completely lies on the back of the female nude. Second, I got rid of quite some props I found redundantly standing in the way. There was an unclear kind of rectangular whiteish object in the left corner. Probably a towel but I got rid of it. There was also an interfering side table next to the tub the nude woman is stepping into. There also was a very rickety washbasin with a faucet and a rubber hose on it. I remember seeing those at my grandmother’s house in the 1970s. After some consideration I decided to get rid of them all, focus on the woman and the stepping into position. Ingres and My Love for the Female Back Instead I depicted some kind of make-shift classic column. Something more classy and perhaps a bit overdone. The result even reminds me of that famous nude Ingres once painted. A classic female back, called ‘The Valpinçon Bather’. Even without the column Breitner’s photo evoked that association. Strange how subconsciousness works sometimes. In the end the task I bestowed myself with proved to be a tall order. The resolution simply wasn’t showing a lot of details, especially in the back muscle structures. Hence I threw in some details myself such as the fossae lumbales and some spinal suggestions. All-in-all, a great little study and I remember how fun it was to draw a female back once more. My clearest example was my pastel Nude 01 (2012). Now I’m utterly motivated to do some more in 2026. Graphite pencil (Faber Castell Pitt Graphite Matt pencil 14B) drawing on Clairfontaine Lavis paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm) Artist: Corné Akkers