Doll - "Antoinette" c. 1938

Eugene Croe created “Antoinette” sometime between 1855 and 1995. Look at this doll portrait, so formal and fragile, as if Croe was really taken with Antoinette’s beauty, and wanted to document her properly. There's a tender and melancholic atmosphere here. The blues and grays give off a delicate, almost ghostly, quality. Croe was probably considering the surface of the paper, and how the colors could live there in a way that would bring out Antoinette’s personality and the texture of her garments. I can imagine him carefully applying the watercolors, trying to capture the light reflecting off that satin dress. It is difficult to paint such an exact copy of someone else’s work. Thinking about surface and the way light interacts with fabric makes me think of the Pre-Raphaelites and how they tried to capture the luminosity of fabrics. It’s all connected, you know? Croe, whether consciously or not, is in conversation with all those artists who came before, each adding their own perspective and technique.