Toy Coach and Two Horses c. 1936

Du Bois made this watercolour of a Toy Coach and Two Horses sometime between 1775 and 1875. It's this kind of simple image of a complex machine that really sings to me. I can really feel the artist getting down to the essentials of the subject matter, zeroing in on what makes a coach a coach, and horses horses, rather than any fussy, fancy details. I imagine Du Bois was in a conversation with other artists about how to best represent movement and dynamism on a static surface. The artist has captured the feel of a toy. There is something very playful in the choice to depict the toy and people as flat blocks of color with minimal blending or shading. These ghostly grey horses almost float, and the passengers have no coach to ride in. So much imagination is required from the viewer. This feels connected to other naive painting, where it is left to the audience to put the pieces together, and in that process discover the work.