Windsor Chair 1936

Dana Bartlett made this painting of a Windsor chair, we don’t know when, but it appears to be made with watercolor. You can see the strokes of the brush. It’s so matter-of-fact and kind of homespun. I can just imagine Dana, perched on a stool in his studio, squinting, trying to get the proportion and the color of the wood just right. I wonder if he ever sat in the chair? Did he think about who else might sit in it? It’s so brown. Brown, brown, brown. There’s something so beautiful in that simplicity. The chair legs splay outward, and they are captured with tiny flicks of brown and a few simple strokes. It reminds me a little of Guston, who knew all the art history, but chose to paint in a raw, childlike way. Dana probably wasn’t thinking about Guston. But all us painters are in an ongoing conversation, I think.