Doll with Grey Wig - "Matilda" c. 1938

Rex F. Bush painted "Doll with Grey Wig - Matilda" with what looks like watercolours on paper. The application is smooth, with very little texture, as if Bush wanted to render a perfect image of the doll, but the paint has its own ideas and moves slightly outside of the lines. The red of Matilda’s dress, it's so flat and even, it feels like a stage backdrop, like the set of a play. There’s a curious contrast with the treatment of the hair, where Bush seems to be working wet-into-wet to give the doll's wig a greater sense of volume. A slight pooling of the pigment around the hair makes it look almost liquid. This piece reminds me of Alex Katz, he also paints figures in a way that prioritizes surface and colour, but there’s something uniquely charming and a little unsettling about Bush’s doll.