Girl with Flower - Robert Lohman, c. 1963

Robert Lohman’s Girl with Flower, dated 1963, is a watercolor and ink work that turns a simple figural subject into something delicate, lyrical, and only partly abstracted. The image is built around the frontal presence of a young girl whose body is suggested through pale washes of gray, pink, and cream, then pulled into focus by darker black line. Lohman does not describe the girl in a conventional portrait manner. Instead, he allows her face, shoulders, arms, and hands to emerge gradually from the page, as though the figure is being remembered rather than recorded.

The composition is vertically organized and closely cropped. The girl fills most of the sheet, giving the work an intimate scale. Her face sits high in the composition, with the torso tapering downward toward the hands, which gather around a small flower at the center. That flower becomes the emotional and visual anchor of the work. It is not elaborately rendered, but Lohman gives it just enough definition to make it legible. In a painting this open and atmospheric, the flower reads almost like a private offering—something held carefully, perhaps protectively.

The face is one of the most compelling aspects of the piece. Lohman places dark eyes, a small nose, and a softly indicated mouth within a pale field of wash, allowing the features to hover rather than settle into sharp definition. The girl’s expression is difficult to name precisely. She does not appear theatrical or heavily emotive. Instead, she seems quiet, reserved, and slightly inward. The looseness of the handling gives her a kind of distance, but not coldness. She feels present, though delicately so.

The use of line is especially important. Lohman’s black ink or watercolor line moves in a free, almost calligraphic way across the figure. It outlines the face, loops through the shoulders, traces the contour of the dress or blouse, and curls around the hands and flower. In some passages the line is bold and fluid; in others it thins to a barely-there filament. This variation keeps the work alive. The line is not simply descriptive—it sets the tempo of the image.

Color is handled with great economy. Pink is the dominant accent, appearing in blooming washes around the head, down the sides of the figure, and near the lower portion of the composition. These pink passages give the work warmth and softness, but they also create a halo-like field around the girl, almost as though she is surrounded by a vapor of feeling rather than by literal space. Pale gray and off-white washes build the body, while black marks provide contrast and structure. The limited palette keeps the painting restrained and elegant.

The treatment of the hands deserves attention. Lohman does not render them with anatomical precision, yet they are central to the work’s feeling. The hands gather around the flower in a way that suggests care, hesitancy, and quiet concentration. In portraiture, hands often reveal character, and here Lohman uses them to reinforce the tenderness of the subject. The flower is not being displayed outward so much as held inward, close to the body.

There is also a notable balance between innocence and abstraction. The title calls the sitter a girl, and the figure does retain a youthful gentleness, but Lohman avoids sentimentality. He does not turn the subject into a sweet illustration. Instead, he filters her through a modernist language of stain, contour, and omission. The result is a portrait that feels light and open, yet also serious in its formal intelligence.

Stylistically, Girl with Flower occupies a middle ground between figure study and expressive abstraction. It is more recognizably figural than some of Lohman’s later, more fragmented works, but it already shows his interest in letting the body dissolve into wash and gesture. The figure is not fully enclosed. The blank paper remains active, and much of the work’s beauty comes from what Lohman leaves unresolved.

Girl with Flower is a quiet and affecting work. Its strength lies in restraint: a limited palette, minimal detail, and a softly held subject. Lohman turns a simple image of a girl holding a flower into something more elusive—part portrait, part memory, part atmosphere. The painting does not insist on itself. It invites close looking, and its delicacy is what gives it lasting presence.