Leather Hat Box c. 1940

Clarence W. Dawson made this watercolour of a leather hat box, but we don’t know when exactly. The way the pigment pools in the shadows gives the image a feeling of depth and weight, but there’s something playful about how the stripes inside the box don’t quite line up, as if the whole thing might topple over. You can almost smell the leather, right? Dawson really coaxes it out of the page. Look at the buckle on the strap of the smaller case, it's the same gold as the keyhole of the hat box, but warmer somehow. These details create a visual echo, a sense of connection between the objects that helps to unify the piece, drawing your eye around and through it. Dawson’s like another master of the mundane, Giorgio Morandi, who arranged bottles and vases in such a way that you really looked at them. It makes you wonder about all the things we don't really see in our day-to-day lives.