Study carried out with the so-called ‘three crayons’ technique: bistre, sanguine and chalk. Technique requiring great mastery to achieve a correct proportioning of its three components.

The historian of art, who doubles the artist, is at the origin of this choice. Indeed, Joukhadar is always surprised that certain techniques with remarkable artistic qualities are nowadays neglected. Particularly sensitive to the delicacy and refinement of these techniques, Joukhadar also finds them very tasteful, due to the absence of any easy or spectacular effect. Only connoisseurs can ignore the low cost of the material and recognize the real artistic value of a quality watercolour, a sanguine, a bistre, a wash or a pastel. They might even prefer their authenticity to paintings with enhancing and flattering dimensions and colours. The sketch of the Holy Family by Leonardo in London is far more moving than the same subject in a painting at the Louvre.

Face of a man would be a kind of secret note in a diary. The work is partly unfinished: the left ear of the model, the neckline and the shoulder are barely marked. The hair is in the state of an advanced sketch. The face is particularly elaborate.

The first impression that emerges from the face is that of a handsome man, very masculine, almost harsh, unsentimental, self-confident, entrepreneur, determined … This impression dissipates very quickly to make room for many more feelings and humaneness. On getting closer to the face one is struck by the intensity of painful emotional restraint. A torrent of feelings emerges from this quivering chin, restrained lips, tight throat and especially the eyes that stare at us intensely, desperately holding back their tears, and the eye-to-eye axis shows they watch us from a distance so close that one feels the radiation of the heat that emanates from his face and trunk.

Face of a man represents a specific human case, one who is unjustly reproached for hardness and a lack of feelings, but who reveals himself to be quite the contrary, and very often when it is too late. What a humanity!…