Untitled (French Restaurant) c. 1930

Susan Willard Flint made this drawing of a French restaurant with graphite on paper, but we don’t know exactly when. Look at how she uses a dense network of hatching to build up the dark areas of the composition, and then leaves the paper bare to suggest a source of light coming from the left. You can almost feel the scratch of the graphite on the paper’s surface. The material aspects are key here. See how the texture of the waiter’s jacket is built up through lots of small marks, giving it a real sense of volume and weight. Then, those crazy eyes of the maitre d’! They’re a couple of simple dots, but they tell you everything you need to know. Flint’s contemporary, Peggy Bacon, also made satirical drawings of modern life, and there’s a similar dry wit at play here. And ultimately art is about that – sharing of visual language across time. It's a continuing conversation.