Technique: Pencil and Charcoal on Paper

Inscription: Upper left signed: "H. Arnold". Upper right inscribed by the artist's hand: "Ungar. Circusreiterin". Upper right dated: "Berlin 1904".

Date: 1904

Description: Herbert Arnold belongs to that generation of forgotten artists who did not follow the profound upheavals in the art landscape in the first two decades of the 20th century. Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism, Abstraction: all these remained foreign words for Arnold, as for many others. After training at the academies in Leipzig and Berlin, he worked mainly as a graphic artist and illustrator, stayed in the Willingshausen painters' colony in 1909 and became an honorary citizen of Berlin in 1911. His favourite subjects were fairy tales and legends, but also genre scenes. Our impressive print also shows him as an apt portraitist. Even though the circus and the circus ring became a popular motif of representation in art in the 20th century, Arnold is exclusively concerned with the face of the woman in this drawing. Only the inscription identifies her as a circus rider. With deep strokes worked into the sheet, he shapes the hair and blouse into a plastic appearance and makes the portrait tangible. The ascetic austerity and lack of emotion seems particularly modern to today's viewer, if one has Thomas Ruff's portrait photographs in mind. It is precisely this direct confrontation without any compulsion to represent that makes this impressive drawing so appealing.

Keywords: Portrait of a Lady, Hungary, Genre, 20th century, Modern, Portraits, Hungary,