Watchman's Rattle c. 1937

Richard Whitaker, who lived between 1855 and 1995, made this watercolour painting of a 'Watchman's Rattle.' Look at how the pigment pools and flows across the paper, allowing the artist to capture the textures of the wood, from the smooth handle to the layered, contoured body. Whitaker seems to be interested in the tension between representation and abstraction, between the thing itself and the idea of the thing. The palette is muted, and the application of colour is soft and blended, but notice how the artist also uses dry brush marks to create a tactile sense of the wooden object. He leaves unpainted areas to describe the light falling across the depicted form. The painting reminds me of the work of Giorgio Morandi, who was also fascinated by simple, everyday objects and the subtle nuances of light and shadow. Like Morandi, Whitaker invites us to slow down and really see the world around us, finding beauty in the ordinary and embracing the ambiguity of representation.