Doll c. 1936

Jane Iverson painted this doll sometime in the 20th century, using watercolor, it looks like, on paper. The color palette here is so restrained, almost ghostly, with these very thin washes, one laid over the other, like the memory of a thing rather than the thing itself. And the texture! It's all in the paper, isn't it? Iverson really lets the grain of the paper do so much work. There's a particular spot, right at the hem of the dress, where you can see the blue line bleeding out a little, making this halo effect that softens the whole image. It's like the doll is fading into the background, or maybe emerging from it. Iverson's approach reminds me a little of someone like Florine Stettheimer, who also had this light touch and a real sense of the theatrical. But where Stettheimer is all about the surface and the sparkle, Iverson seems to be looking for something deeper, a kind of quiet melancholy that makes you wonder about the stories this doll could tell.