White Rabbit 1909

Jan Mankes made this painting of a white rabbit sometime early last century. The tones of the painting are subdued – various whites and grays, umbers and browns – and it’s easy to imagine him layering the paint, wiping it away, and adding more. You can feel Mankes’s presence in the deliberate brushstrokes that form the rabbit’s fur. The subdued palette is beautifully subtle, like a whispered secret. What was Mankes thinking when he made this? Was he interested in the challenge of painting white on white? The rabbit seems both present and absent. I wonder if, in painting the rabbit, Mankes was trying to capture something fleeting. It makes me think of other painters like Morandi who, through the act of painting, found significance in the ordinary. It’s like he’s saying, ‘Look closely, there’s more here than you think.’ Artists are always having a conversation with each other across time, so it's nice to see.