Silver Caster c. 1936

Hester Duany made this drawing of a Silver Caster, we don't know exactly when, with graphite on paper. It looks like it could be a photograph, doesn’t it? Almost like one of those hyper-realist paintings from the '70s! But look closer, and you can see all the tiny adjustments, the slight wobbles in the perspective. It's a careful study in tonal gradations and shading, with these lovely pencil marks, building up the form. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how the artist has chosen to focus on a functional object? The caster is so delicately rendered, so precise and clean, it makes you wonder what Duany might have made of someone like Giorgio Morandi, who was also obsessed with rendering household objects, but in a much more painterly way. Maybe she would have thought it was a mess! Who knows?