Reticule c. 1939

Marie Alain made this watercolour of a reticule, a small purse, at an unknown date. I can imagine her, eyes close to the page, patiently laying down thin washes of colour to capture the way the light catches on the surface of the leather. You see how the chain seems to glow against the flat ground? She’s really thinking about the relationship between the object and its setting; figuring out how to make something three-dimensional on a two-dimensional surface. Alain probably wasn’t thinking about ‘pushing the boundaries of painting’ like some artists I know! She was likely just trying to capture what she saw, but in that process, she reveals something about the way we see and understand the world around us. It's an exercise in perception. All painters, whether they know it or not, are in conversation with each other.