Venster met gordijnen c. 1895 - 1910

This drawing of a window with curtains was made by Léon Laroche, using what seems to be pencil and watercolour. The window is dressed to the nines in lush, patterned fabric. You can see the artist is really thinking about decoration, but I’m drawn to his process of layering pattern upon pattern, lace upon pleat. The image is full of visual textures that create a mood, from the swags at the top to the frilly lace at the bottom. This sort of delicate, almost obsessive rendering of ornamentation gives the piece a kind of feverish, interior quality. I love the way the soft watercolour suggests both light and shadow, so that the folds of the curtains seem to shift and shimmer before your eyes. The whole thing reminds me a little bit of some of Charles Burchfield’s interior scenes, where a humble domestic space becomes a playground for the imagination. With the window, Laroche invites us into his own eccentric vision.